 DistroWatch Weekly |
| DistroWatch Weekly, Issue 490, 14 January 2013 |
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Welcome to this year's second issue of DistroWatch Weekly! Many of us take this time of year as an opportunity to gaze back at things we have recently experienced and to look ahead at things to come. This week we are going to do both. In our news section we hear the story of Dan Gillmor, a man who decided to migrate to Linux to find out how he feels about his experiment with open source. We also look back at some of the more influential projects of 2012 and what they have brought to the community. Looking ahead we examine what the openSUSE project is doing to make their distribution more relevant to consumers of low-power laptops. In our feature this week Jesse Smith revisits the Manjaro Linux distribution and shares his experiences with the young Arch-based project. Also in this week's edition we bring you news of the Linux community's latest releases and we take a look at a useful application, called Able2Extract, which has just been ported to Linux. Plus, we bring you news, reviews and podcasts from around the web. 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 (22MB) and MP3 (37MB) formats
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| Feature Story (by Jesse Smith) |
Return to Manjaro Linux 0.8.3
 Back in December I wrote an article in which I briefly touched on three different Linux distributions. One of those distributions was Manjaro Linux, a young project based on Arch Linux. At the time I was quickly proceeding through the three projects I had on my list and, when I ran into a dead end early on I decided to cut my losses and move on to the next project on the list. As it turned out, where I had run into problems was not, as I first thought, due to a malfunction, but rather to a misunderstanding of the project's documentation and editions. What I had thought was the project's Xfce edition was, in fact, their net-install disc. Following my review appearing on DistroWatch one of the developers left a comment explaining what had happened and suggesting Manjaro hadn't been given its due consideration. After some reflection, I found I agreed with the developer, my decision to move on was rash. It's one thing to abandon or criticize a project for technical faults, limitations or documentation errors, it is another to criticize a project over a simple misunderstanding. I offer my apologies to the Manjaro developers and community. I hope you will bear with me now as I return to explore this young distribution in greater detail.
As just mentioned, Manjaro Linux is based on Arch Linux and the Manjaro team is focused on making that base easier to set up and use. In particular Manjaro comes with a command line installer which should lower the bar to people wanting to try Arch and experience the K.I.S.S principle. The distro comes in a number of editions, including Xfce, KDE, Cinnamon, MATE and a net-install option. The project's mirrors also contain an ISO for a community contributed Enlightenment edition. Each ISO is offered in 32-bit and 64-bit builds. I opted to try the Xfce edition and the ISO image I downloaded was approximately 780 MB in size.
Booting from the Manjaro Linux media brings us to an Xfce desktop. A dialogue box appears, providing us with the passwords for the regular user and root accounts. The background is a splash of green on black. The desktop is laid out in the traditional fashion with the application menu and task switcher at the bottom of the screen. On the desktop we find icons on the desktop for browsing the file system, opening the project's documentation and for launching the installer. The documentation is clear and fairly detailed. It walks us through performing a basic installation of the distribution. There are also notes included in the documentation relating to package management and keeping our operating system up to date. This local documentation mostly deals with getting started and it is further augmented by the project's Wiki.
Manjaro Linux 0.8.3 - the project's documentation and website
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The Manjaro installer is a series of curses-based menus and prompts, similar in style to Slackware's installer or FreeBSD's. The first question we are asked is whether we would like to use the stable installer or the new installer currently being tested. The latter features some new features, such as Btrfs support. I decided to stick with the stable version of the installer as I didn't plan to set up Btrfs volumes. The stable installer walked me through choosing my time zone from a menu and then confirming the system's clock had the correct time. Next up is partitioning, which is handled using the cfdisk utility. Once we have the disk carved up we are asked which partition we wish to use for swap space and which should be used for the root partition. We are then asked which file system we want to use for the root partition and options include Reiser, JFS, XFS, ext2/3/4 and Btrfs.
The installer then copies its files to the local drive, a process which went quickly, taking less than 15 minutes. With its files copied, the installer walks us through some final configuration steps. We are asked to set a root password and create a regular user account. We are asked for our locale/language and keymap and I found both of the menus asking for the keyboard layout and our language were cryptic, using abbreviations rather than normal, human readable names for languages and keyboards. The last two steps in the install process are installing the GRUB2 boot loader and, if we wish, we are offered a chance to manually edit Manjaro's configuration files in a text editor. After that we can reboot the system and try running Manjaro locally.
Manjaro boots, quite quickly, to a graphical login screen. In fact, Manjaro does just about everything quickly. The system is light and the Xfce desktop is very responsive. The distribution seems designed with the idea it will stay out of the way as much as possible. Should the user wish to do something it seems to be expected the user will find what they need, rather having the system bring things to their attention. This makes for a clean environment, though it also means the onus is on the user to make sure things are running the way they wish and that the system is kept up to date.
Manjaro comes with a fairly small selection of software out of the box. The applications it does include are generally lighter than the mainstream solutions. For instance, we are treated to the Midori web browser and Sylpheed e-mail client. Pidgin and XChat are available for instant messaging. The distro does not include a productivity suite, but there is a menu entry labeled "LibreOffice Installer" and I'll come back to that in a bit. The GNU Image Manipulation Program is included, along with a PDF viewer, the xfburn disc burner and the Xnoise audio player. I found multimedia, such as mp3 files, would play out of the box. We also find some small programs for editing text, handling file archives and simple calculations.
There are a lot of programs for adjusting the Xfce environment, using these we can change the look & feel of the desktop, change system time and make other adjustments. There is a graphical sensor viewer, handy if you want to monitor your machine's temperature. The Qt Designer program is available to us, though Manjaro does not come with any compiler. We are provided with Java and a Flash browser plugin. To help us get on-line the Network Manager utility is installed for us. We are also given two graphical programs for dealing with software packages, which I will touch on in a moment. My one surprise was the lack of any OpenSSH client utilities, which come included with most Linux distributions. Behind the scenes we find the Linux kernel, version 3.4 at time of writing.
There are two graphical applications related to package management included in the Manjaro distribution, the first is called PkgBrowser. This program's window is divided into three sections. The entire left side of the screen is dedicated to setting filters and search parameters that will let us locate software packages, either installed locally or in the repositories. In the upper-right corner of the screen is a list of software which matches our current search parameters. Under this list is a box which contains detailed information on the currently selected package. While PkgBrowser bears a strong resemblance to graphical package managers in other distributions, it doesn't do any software management, it allows us to find software and learn about packages, but it doesn't perform any installations, removals or updates. These tasks are left to the Pacman-GUI utility. Pacman-GUI is a graphical front-end to the pacman package manager. Launching this application brings up a screen with many buttons, each one labeled with an action we can ask of the underlying package manager.
Possible actions include updating our repository information, downloading all available upgrades, searching for a specific package, removing a package or installing a package. Choosing to perform an installation or a removal brings up a prompt asking us for the exact name of the package we want to work with. This is where is comes in handy to have the PkgBrowser window open, we can find software with PkgBrowser and manipulate software with the Pacman-GUI program. As such I came to think of Pacman-GUI not so much as a package manager, but more as a launch point, a way to run pacman jobs without the need to remember the proper syntax. Personally, I suspect once users become accustomed to the way Manjaro handles software they may find working directly with the pacman command line package manager more straight forward, or at least faster. The Manjaro package repositories are smaller than the mainstream Linux distributions. At the time of writing there were approximately 6,000 packages in the default repositories.
Manjaro Linux 0.8.3 - browsing and managing software packages
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Earlier I mentioned that Manjaro Linux doesn't come with an office suite, instead providing a launcher for a program which will install LibreOffice. I ran the LibreOffice Installer app and it let me select which components I wanted and which language packs I required. The program then downloaded the requested components and provided me with progress bars showing how far along it was. The installer appeared to complete its tasks cleanly and added LibreOffice launchers to my application menu, However, I was not able to launch any of the LibreOffice applications, any attempt to run them would indicate missing dependencies and the program would close.
The one serious issue I ran into during my trial came in the wake of an update. After several days of smooth use I ran into a problem when, after an update, Manjaro Linux would no longer boot. Attempts at booting in fallback mode or with various kernel parameters failed to get the system to a stage where I could login. Sadly, this signaled an end to my trial and acted as a reminder of the risks in maintaining a rolling release distribution.
Manjaro Linux 0.8.3 - making use of multimedia applications and codecs
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I tried running Manjaro Linux on my desktop machine (dual-core 2.8 GHz CPU, 6 GB of RAM, Radeon video card, Realtek network card) and in a VirtualBox environment. At first I had a little trouble getting Manjaro to run on the physical hardware. I found the system wouldn't boot with the default kernel parameters, nor with "nomodeset" passed to the kernel. The operating system would boot if I insisted on using the non-free video drivers which come on the installation media. Once the boot issue was resolved, Manjaro worked smoothly and desktop performance was quite fast. When running the distribution in a virtual environment I found it booted without any problems and, again, the system was very responsive. Manjaro is light on memory too, requiring only about 160MB of RAM to login to the Xfce desktop.
The project's website states that Manjaro Linux is designed with the hope of bridging the gap between do-it-yourself distributions such as Arch and convenient out-of-the-box solutions such as Linux Mint. In my opinion that is a very long bridge. There is a big chasm between "just works" and doing everything manually. Manjaro, while it may be drawing inspiration from both ends of the spectrum, ends up closer to the Arch side than the Mint side of the divide. The basic installer with its many steps and required knowledge, the somewhat awkward package management and the small collection of default packages all seem to be geared toward experienced Linux users. Still, there are conveniences, such as having working multimedia support out of the box, a cleanly configured Xfce desktop and the optional use of non-free drivers. I suspect people who like Arch and want to get the system up and running quickly will appreciate Manjaro, also people who want a lightweight operating system and don't mind a rolling release model may like what Manjaro has to offer. At the moment I feel the young project would benefit from a graphical installer (or a streamlined text installer) and a more modern package manager, but otherwise the technology in place and the documentation available look promising.
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| Miscellaneous News (by Jesse Smith) |
Migrating to Ubuntu, running openSUSE on a Chromebook and a look at influential open source projects.
 For well over a decade now the question has raged back and forth as to whether Linux is ready for desktop use. The answer, of course, depends entirely on whose desktop we are talking about. Everybody has different needs, people have different levels of comfort with new technology and users run different applications. Dan Gillmor over at The Guardian decided to swap out his proprietary platforms for open source software to see what would happen. He traded his Mac desktop for Ubuntu and moved to using Android on his tablet and phone. He says, of the switch to Ubuntu, "For a month or so, I was at sea -- making keystroke errors and missing a few Mac applications on which I'd come to rely. But I found Linux software that worked at least well enough, and sometimes better than Mac or Windows counterparts. And one day I realized that my fingers and brain had fully adjusted to the new system; now I'm a bit confused when I use a Mac."
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 According to a recent ZDnet article Amazon's top selling laptop runs a flavour of Linux. By default the Samsung Chromebook runs a stripped down operating system with the Linux kernel at its core. However, the enterprising engineers in the openSUSE community saw an opportunity to make the most out of the device and ported openSUSE 12.2 to run on the Chromebook. The small device is able to run the Xfce desktop and the ported version of openSUSE supports wireless networking. "... a small team of SUSE engineers and openSUSE community members have been working on supporting the ARM Chromebook with openSUSE, and can now report their first success: a `mostly working' openSUSE 12.2 image that you can boot from (using a USB stick so the stock image is left untouched). This image already includes a usable Xfce desktop."
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 The start of a new year is a good time to take stock of what we have, where we came from and, possibly, where we are going. In that vein Carla Schroder has put together a quick look at some of the open source projects she feels are important and have made their influence felt over the past twelve months. She covers Linux distributions, hardware and file systems that have made an impact on the open source landscape. "There are literally hundreds of important and useful Linux projects to choose from. Linux Mint is a beautiful polished distro with one of the best Xfce implementations. Automotive Linux is red-hot, Valve Software is rolling out games to Linux, the Linux kernel continues its amazing success as the ultimate general-purpose operating system kernel of all time, the wealth of high-quality multimedia and artistic programs continues to grow, big distributed science and research projects, supercomputing, mobile, and everything in between." We hope you will chime in with your favourite open source project in the comments section below.
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| Statistics (by Ladislav Bodnar) |
OSDisc.com orders in 2011 and 2012
Measuring the popularity of Linux distribution is not an easy task. While some data, such as our Page Hit Ranking statistics, Google trends, online polls and download counts can give some indications as to what users of free operating system prefer, each of these data sets has its flaws and larger than acceptable margin of error. To add to the mix of available statistics, here is another piece of information, this time from OSDisc.com. OSDisc.com is a popular online store selling CDs, DVDs and USB storage devices with free operating systems. The site owners were kind enough to compile their sales data for the past two years and these are summarised below. The third column of each table represents the percentage of each distribution's share of the total number of sales made by OSDisc.com for the specified period.
Although Ubuntu remains the most wanted distribution among the OSDisc.com customers, it's interesting to note that some of the projects often considered as good alternatives to Ubuntu, have dramatically increased their market share. Linux Mint is now just a stone's throw away from Canonical's flagship product, while Xubuntu, Lubuntu and Zorin OS have also recorded noticeable spikes in interest. Mageia, the "number two" distribution in terms of DistroWatch's page hit stats, has appeared in OSDisc.com statistics for the first time, replacing Mandriva Linux which is no longer present. As is always the case with this CD/DVD vendor, many utility projects, such as Trinity Rescue Kit, SystemRescueCd or Parted Magic tend to get a surprisingly large number of orders.
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| Software Review (by Jesse Smith) |
Able2Extract 8.0 from InvestInTech.com
It happens so frequently I can almost perform both sides of the conversation in my sleep. Someone (a client, a family member, a friend) calls and tells me they have received a document via e-mail. They have to make edits and send it back, but they can't figure out how to make changes to the attached document. The received file is a PDF document and, inevitably, the person calling doesn't have a copy of Adobe Acrobat, Foxit's editor or converter software. They may be able to copy & paste the document's text into their productivity software, but the formatting is going to suffer in an awful way. The issue is sometimes complicated further depending on the operating system the caller is using.
It is for situations like the one above that Able2Extract was created. The Able2Extract software was developed by Investintech, a company based in Canada that specializes in dealing with PDF documents. Up until recently Able2Extract was developed exclusively for the Windows platform, but version 8.0 has been ported to both OS X and Linux. The Linux edition is supported on Fedora (version 15 and newer) and Ubuntu (10.04 and newer). The software is proprietary and offered in both Deb and RPM package formats. I downloaded the Debian package, which is 22MB in size and will run on both 32-bit and 64-bit systems. Installing the package places Able2Extract's binary files, libraries and documentation in the /opt directory. The program's icon is added to our application menu under the "Office" category.
Launching Able2Extract brings up a screen with the software's license agreement. We are then informed the program may be used for a week for free as a trial. Following that week further use will require a license key. With the preliminaries out of the way we are brought to an empty document viewer which looks much like other PDF viewers such as Adobe Reader, Okular or Evince. The Able2Extract software pops up a tip showing us how to get started by opening a file. Once we open a PDF file the software will display similar tips to help us through the process of converting the document into a different format.
Over the course of my trial I opened many PDF documents. Some were entirely embedded images, some were complex manuals with pictures and text, others were solely text in a simple format and some were carefully crafted text documents with a very particular formatting. A couple were small, just a single page, others were over 1,000 pages in length. With a single exception all of the PDF files opened and displayed without any problem, just as they would in other document viewers. (The one exception to my successful experiences opened, but didn't format properly and displayed a handful of extra blank pages.) Now we get to the interesting part, converting a PDF document into another format. Able2Extract supports a range of target formats. Any PDF we open can be converted into an image, an AutoCAD file, an HTML document, or various OpenOffice/LibreOffice formats. Specifically Able2Extract will support exporting files in Writer, Calc and Impress formats. Microsoft Office 2007 formats are also supported and we can save our exported files as Word, Excel or PowerPoint documents. Our destination format can be selected with the click of a button at the top of the application's window.
Able2Extract 8.0 - selecting the output format
(full image size: 355kB, screen resolution 1280x1000 pixels)
For each document type we have the option of extracting the entire contents of the PDF file or a selection of the file defined by drawing a box around the desired area with our mouse pointer. During my experiment with Able2Extract I tried exporting files into all of the possible formats and found it worked smoothly and, usually, quickly. The process is always straight forward: open a document, click the "select all" button, hit the icon for the output format and choose a file name for the new file. It's all pleasantly simple. The only issue I ran into was when I tried creating image files from the source PDF document. When the conversion process completed Able2Extract would display an error saying the destination file, the image I wanted to create, didn't exist. However, the image file would be created and the contents would correctly mirror the original PDF. I suspect the error message is a leftover debug message and can be safely ignored. One feature of Able2Extract I especially enjoyed was the way in which it would allow me to customize the formatting of spreadsheet files.
We can do things like manually adjust the size of data cells and change headers & footers. We can also create or destroy tables to further customize how Able2Extract interprets the data in the source PDF file. All of the exports I performed to OpenOffice/LibreOffice formats worked very well and I had no complaints with the resulting documents. When exporting to MS-Office files I sometimes ran into formatting issues, but I suspect this is due to my opening the MS-Office documents in LibreOffice. In other words, I think my formatting issues were a result of LibreOffice not properly interpreting the alien format, rather than Able2Extract's formatting instructions. At time of writing I haven't had the chance to open any of my newly created files in MS-Office to confirm this.
A very handy feature of Able2Extract is its batch job utility. Clicking the Batch icon on the application's menu bar brings up a window where we can queue multiple files, select a desired output format and just leave Able2Extract to process the entire list. If you have ever walked into an office that has thousands of documents they want converted from PDF to a word processing format you will appreciate just how welcome this set-and-forget feature is. I ran the batch process on a directory of manuals and books, all of which were properly copied and converted.
Able2Extract 8.0 - setting up a batch job
(full image size: 57kB, screen resolution 1280x1000 pixels)
The one area where Able2Extract didn't perform as I had hoped was when I asked it to open a PDF file containing an image which in turn contained text. Basically I see this as a worst case scenario, where a person has e-mailed over a file that is all "text", but the text is actually one giant image. To its credit, Able2Extract immediately figured out what I had opened and displayed a tip window letting me know it had detected the text-filled image. I was asked to read some documentation on the subject and told that, as this was a special case, to extract the text I would have to download Able2Extract Pro which contains optical character recognition (OCR) technology. As the Pro version is offered with a free one-week trial, I gave it a try. The Pro version of Able2Extract runs on all supported platforms (Linux, OS X and Windows) and I had no trouble installing the Pro software alongside the basic version. I ran two images containing text through the Pro version of Able2Extract. One was a small image containing only black-on-white text I had created for the purpose of my experiment and the other was a PDF copy of a business card which was dominated by an image containing text. In both cases the software appeared to work for a few seconds and then locked up. No output was created in either case.
Able2Extract 8.0 - customizing spreadsheet layout
(full image size: 258kB, screen resolution 1280x1000 pixels)
Overall I was happy with Able2Extract. Aside from my worst case scenario mentioned above, the program performed very well. It handled a wide variety of PDF files of all sizes and it was able to consistently and cleanly export data to all supported formats. Able2Extract works well as both a document viewer and as a converter and features a beautifully simple interface. Speaking of the interface, Able2Extract is put together with the Qt framework which makes for a native-looking port. It may sound like a small thing, but I see a lot of programs which don't blend in when moved to a different operating system or even a different desktop environment. I like that Able2Extract looks as though it belongs on my desktop. Mostly I was taken with the batch converter utility. Often where there is one PDF document waiting to be edited, there are dozens more. The batch utility will save people like myself a good deal of time.
The basic edition of Able2Extract is free to try for a week and can be purchased for $99.85 (I believe the price is in Canadian dollars) and the "Pro" version I mentioned above costs $129.95. Volume licensing is available for organizations. The cost of Able2Extract puts the price tag approximately on even footing with Foxit and makes it much more financially attractive than Adobe Acrobat. The fact that Able2Extract is a cross-platform solution also gives it a strong advantage over its closest competitors.
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| Released Last Week |
Fuduntu 2013.1
Lee Ward has announced the release of Fuduntu 2013.1, a new build of the rolling-release distribution which features GNOME 2 as its default desktop: "Fuduntu 2013.1 released. For those with hardware that use proprietary drivers, one of the first things that will be noticed after install is Jockey, the program that checks hardware and presents the user with the proprietary driver(s) needed. An example of this would be graphics drivers for NVIDIA and AMD cards. Since we're on the topic of installation, we would like to point out that, by default, sudo is now enabled for all new installs. Another noticeable thing will be the new dock. Unfortunately, AWN is no longer being maintained upstream and there are several bugs that have been left open. In addition, AWN will no longer build against the latest glib. After much discussion, the team decided to migrate to the Cairo dock. This is now installed by default." Read the detailed release announcement for a complete list of new features.
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9
The legacy 5.x branch of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has moved to version 5.9, incorporating all recent feature and security updates: "Red Hat, Inc. today announced the next minor release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9. This release marks the beginning of Production Phase 2 of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and demonstrates the company's continuing effort to promote stability and the preservation of customers' investments in the platform. It maintains Red Hat's commitment to a 10-year life cycle through the introduction of several new features, including hardware enablement, security, standards and certifications, developer tools, virtualization, and more. As with all minor releases, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.9 maintains backwards compatibility with hardware and software platforms across the life cycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5." See the press release and the detailed release notes for more information.
OS4 13.2 "OpenDesktop"
Roberto Dohnert has announced the release of OS4 13.2 "OpenDesktop" edition, an Ubuntu-based Linux distribution with a customised Xfce desktop: "Today we are pleased to announce the release of OS4 OpenDesktop 13.2. This release brings a long-awaited update to our next-generation desktop operating system platform. With this release we have also refreshed our pre-installed hardware line. Some of the advancements brought to OpenDesktop 13.2 are: Linux kernel 3.2, the 3.5 kernel is still available in the repositories; Thunar 1.6.3; Fogger for creating we-based desktop applications; parental controls; support for Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HD and Nook-based tablets; a new system profiler and benchmark utility. It also brings updates to applications and device drivers as well as bug fixes in the kernel itself." Read the full release announcement for additional information.
PelicanHPC 2.9
Michael Creel has announced the release of PelicanHPC 2.9, a Debian-based live DVD that makes it possible to set up high-performance computing clusters in minutes: "PelicanHPC version 2.9 is available. Octave 3.6.3, dynare 4.3.1, some updates to the econometrics stuff, and also the usual sync to Debian. This release is mainly to incorporate package updates from Debian. A note: PelicanHPC is based on Debian stable ('Squeeze'), and is made using live-build v2.x. Before too long, the testing version of Debian ('Wheezy') will become stable. To make live images with 'Wheezy', you need to use live-build v3.x. The build script for PelicanHPC will need to be adapted to use live-build 3.x. I doubt that I will have time/interest to do that, so if anyone would like to take on the job, feel free to go for it." Visit the distribution's home page to read the brief release announcement.
Tails 0.16
Version 0.16 of Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System), a Debian-based distribution with strong privacy and anonymity features while browsing the world wide web, has been released: "Tails, The Amnesic Incognito Live System, version 0.16, is out. All users must upgrade as soon as possible. Notable user-visible changes include: replace the too-easy-to-misclick shut-down button with a better 'Shutdown Helper' applet; display ~/Persistent in GNOME Places and GTK+ file chooser; install dictionaries for a few languages; set Unsafe Browser's window title to 'Unsafe Browser'; install ekeyd to support the EntropyKey; install font for Sinhala script; update Poedit to 1.5.4; expose Vidalia's 'broken onion' icon less; hide the persistence setup launchers in kiosk mode; disable IPv6 on all network interfaces - this is a workaround for the IPv6 link-local multicast leak that was recently discovered...." Read the full release announcement for a complete list of changes and bug fixes.
Untangle Gateway 9.4
Untangle, Inc. has announced the release of Untangle Gateway 9.4, a new version of the Debian-based network gateway with pluggable modules for network applications: "Untangle, Inc., a network software and appliance company, today announced the release of Untangle 9.4, the latest version of its award-winning multi-function firewall software. Untangle 9.4 includes a new Captive Portal as well as a new Host Table and improvements to Session Viewer. Captive Portal receives an entirely new implementation in Untangle 9.4. Captive Portal's role in Untangle's offering is growing more important in several key markets including hospitality and retail alongside established verticals like education and small/medium business. Despite adding new features and functionality to Captive Portal, Untangle has also made it simpler and easier to maintain. Captive Portal is now part of Untangle's Integrated Rules Engine (IRE) and can address critical use cases frequently requested by customers." Here is the full press release.
Slackel 1.0 "Openbox"
Dimitris Tzemos has announced the release of Slackel 1.0 "Openbox" edition, a lightweight desktop Linux distribution based on Slackware's "Current" branch: "Slackel Openbox 1.0 has been released. A collection of two Openbox ISO images are immediately available, including 32-bit and 64-bit installation images. Slackel Openbox 1.0 includes the 'Current' tree of Slackware and Openbox 3.5.0 accompanied by a very rich collection of software. Linux kernel is 3.7.1. The Midori 0.4.7 web browser, Claws-Mail 3.8.1 and Transmission are the main networking applications included in this release. SpaceFM is the file manager. It comes also with OpenJDK 7u9, Rhino, IcedTea-Web, Pidgin and gFTP. Wicd is used for setting up your wired or wireless networking connections. In the multimedia section Whaaw! Media Player is the default movie player, Exaile 3.3.0 is the application to use for managing your music collection and more." The release announcement.
Pear Linux 6.1
David Tavares has announced the release of Pear Linux 6.1, an Ubuntu remix with a simple but beautiful user interface (a customised GNOME 3) and out-of-the-box support for many popular multimedia codecs: "I am pleased to announce the release of Pear Linux 6.1. Pear Linux 6.1 builds on top of our popular previous release of Pear Linux 6 with newly updated software. As Pear Linux 6.1 is based on Ubuntu 12.04.1 it is an LTS (Long-Term Support) release, provided with 5 years of security updates. New software: Pear PPA Manager, Pear Cleaner; software updated, kernel updated. Users who already have Pear Linux 6 installed do not need to get Pear Linux 6.1. All the aforementioned updates and improvements in 6.1 will be applied by installing the latest updates from the Update Manager available this week." Here is the brief release announcement.
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Development, unannounced and minor bug-fix releases
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| Upcoming Releases and Announcements |
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Summary of expected upcoming releases
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| Around the Web |
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Latest reviews
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Latest podcasts
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Latest newsletters
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| DistroWatch.com News |
New distributions added to waiting list
- ArchE17. ArchE17 is a Linux distribution based on Arch Linux equipped with the Liquorix kernel, Yaourt, and, as the name implies, the recently released stable Enlightenment 0.17 desktop environment. ArchE17 will be released weekly as a rolling-release live CD that is designed to run off a standard CD or USB drive.
- Haze OS. Haze OS aims to provide the safest, fastest, easiest and the best out-of-the box solution for your desktop or netbook computers. It is based on Ubuntu. It's completely free and open-source.
- ubermix. Ubermix is a free, specially-built, Ubuntu-based Linux distribution designed with the needs of education in mind. Built by educators with an eye towards student and teacher empowerment, ubermix takes all the complexity out of student devices by making them as reliable and easy-to-use as a cell phone, without sacrificing the power and capabilities of a full operating system. With a turn-key, 5-minute installation, 20-second quick recovery mechanism, and more than 60 free applications pre-installed, ubermix turns whatever hardware you have into a powerful device for learning.
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DistroWatch database summary
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This concludes this week's issue of DistroWatch Weekly. The next instalment will be published on Monday, 21 January 2013. 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)
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| Reader Comments • Jump to last comment |
1 • Manjaro (by Ajay on 2013-01-14 09:15:08 GMT from India)
Thanks for the review!
Just wanted to let the readers know that we are currently working on a graphical installer! You should see it in the near future.
Cheers!
2 • most important open source projects... (by cflow on 2013-01-14 10:03:44 GMT from United States)
Overall I see a couple often overlooked and underestimated projects in open source that are extremely important:
1. Blender: This 3-d animation and modeling software is getting very useful features quite quickly, but really keeping the bug count quite low for its size. Its even just now getting mentioned by several other 3-d sites out there, and it is one of the few applications -not a desktop environment nor OS component- that has such a wide, sustainable development community for something that's open source. I'll definitely watch it grow!
2. Qt5: This toolkit hit a point such that it can help make applications run natively in so many platforms, and a new company now owns it that might utilize such a toolkit. Even Ubuntu considers QML as the standard for making its phone apps.
I'm pretty surprised that ubuntu wasn't the list. It's probably more important that many other operating systems - it's the one that gathers the media attention and drama that gets all the open source projects worked up and thinking about how things should work! Don't underestimate the "Agenda Setting Theory" in media - its quite important for such movement that is predominantly online...
3 • 100% Open? (by fossala on 2013-01-14 10:35:18 GMT from United Kingdom)
I just tried to email HazeOS regarding how free their distrobution is. It seems like there online "contact us" section is broken. They say "It's completely free and open-source." Is this 100% free and open including the libre kernel?
4 • Re: 100% open, Haze OS (by sneeky on 2013-01-14 11:51:03 GMT from United Kingdom)
the contact section of the haze website has not been working for me either, and plus the d/l is hosted by 4share which needs you to sign up to there service, which i will not be doing.he really needs to find a different upload service.
as for 100% free i think he means as in beer.
5 • Qt5 (by elcaset on 2013-01-14 12:43:13 GMT from United States)
at #2, cflow.: I, too am really looking forward to Qt5. It looks quite promising.
6 • Seriously? (by BobbyQuine on 2013-01-14 13:38:04 GMT from United States)
"America's top-selling laptop... the Samsung Chromebook"
7 • Manjaro 0.8.3 bootup issues (by Philip Müller on 2013-01-14 14:25:21 GMT from Germany)
Hi Jesse,
Your bootup-issue might be due glibc 2.17 update in i686 architecture.This is a known issue and is fixed with todays Update: http://forum.manjaro.org/index.php?topic=1528.0
Other than that I'm glad you revisited our young project. Currently we are working on our GUI-Installer. Also we release Manjaro-Openbox later this afternoon. It includes all fixes of today.
8 • Ubuntu Phone (by CSRedRat on 2013-01-14 14:37:21 GMT from Russia)
Where news about Ubuntu Phone, Ubuntu for Android, Ubuntu TV, Wayland in Ubuntu 13.04 and other?
9 • Manjaro update problem (by Donnie on 2013-01-14 14:40:42 GMT from United States)
@Jesse--The update problem that you encountered is quite common with Arch and Arch-based distros. Arch is supposed to be a rolling-release distro, but in reality, you'll end up having to periodically do a clean install whenever an update trashes the system.
Sometimes you can fix the problem by tweaking the grub configuration file, and sometimes you can't.
I've found that running Slackware on the "current" repository provides a much more stable and trouble-free rolling-release type distro.
10 • @3 @4 (by Plutonius on 2013-01-14 15:37:25 GMT from Brazil)
Free beer strikes again. I downloaded it and used in virtualbox. They installed Google Chrome, Skype, TeamViewer, Adobe Air by default and generic kernel. Not freedom compliant by any means.
11 • @8, Ubermix (by Arkanabar on 2013-01-14 15:51:53 GMT from United States)
the story was a RETROspective. The ones you're talking about are PROspective.
As for Ubermix, it looks like a superior classroom solution, compared to Edubuntu. But part of the reason for its success is no doubt the extensive teacher training & development that was done prior to deployment.
12 • Installers... Manjaro (by hughetorrance on 2013-01-14 16:13:17 GMT from United Kingdom)
I find the text type installer easier to use than some GUI installers,I found the Slackware installer easy because I had been playing around with the BSD,s,I also like to do the partitioning separately with gparted,the answer is to do things the way you find easier.
13 • Re: 9 • Manjaro update problem (by Anon on 2013-01-14 16:23:48 GMT from Norway)
Donne wrote: "(...) in reality, you'll end up having to periodically do a clean install whenever an update trashes the system."
Well, maybe you do, but I installed Arch in April 2008 and have yet to be forced to reinstall. A couple times during the first two years I needed to chroot into the system and downgrade the kernel for a short while, that's all. In the meantime I have changed the motherboard and moved the OS to a SSD, but Arch has stayed the same, er... has been changing all the time, needing manual intervention to adjust config files only now and then. Even changing to systemd was a breeze.
For me, as I like to see what's new asap, Arch feels perfect. Should I want a system that I could set and forget, I might choose Slackware. Or I might just stop upgrading Arch - and still be ahead... ;)
14 • @6 (by Josh on 2013-01-14 16:33:38 GMT from United States)
Note that it says "Amazon's" instead of "America's" best-selling laptop ;)
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories-Laptop/zgbs/pc/565108
15 • Re: 9 • You must be kidding (by Pera on 2013-01-14 16:45:34 GMT from Serbia)
Are you serious man? Has to reinstall system? I installed Arch in Decembre 2008,and it works flawlessly till now. Just read news section when is some major upgrade,and don't worry.
16 • Comparing apples and oranges (by vw72 on 2013-01-14 16:59:26 GMT from United States)
This topic comes up all the time and I hate to rehash it, but when comparing Ubuntu to Linux Mint in terms of downloads or disk shipments, it seems that Ubuntu should include it's official spins (Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Gubuntu) in the total. All of these share the same core distribution with a different desktop/application set.
Mint, like Fedora, Suse and the others are not broken out by which desktop they are running and while it may be nice for the developers of the various *buntu spins, they are, still all Ubuntu.
For instance, including all of the official *buntus in the with Ubuntu in the OSDisc stats would increase the Ubuntu stats by 3.6%, or put differently the other Ubuntu spins taken together are ranked right after Debian (which isn't too shabby for bastard step-children).
The fact that Ubuntu assigns specific names to their spins doesn't change that they are spins. The *buntu spins have restrictions on what they can put into their packages based on how it impacts Ubuntu, not the other way around. That would seem to imply they are not independent distributions (there are no Xubuntu repositories, Xubuntu and the other *buntus use the Ubuntu repositories). Likewise, if Ubuntu makes a directional change, say going wayland, then the others must follow. This is how it works with the other distros (Fedora, Mint, OpenSuse, etc.), too.
We treat the other distro's like brands (Ford, Chevy, Toyota), but for some reason, Ubuntu get's broken out into individual models. When trying to do any type of meaningful comparison, it would be helpful if all of the distros were treated the same way.
There is no doubt that Mint is a very successful distribution that meets the needs of many users. This post is not about that. What it is about is treating all of the distros on Distrowatch the same way.
17 • Other pears and pineapples (by dbrion on 2013-01-14 17:27:53 GMT from France)
Fedora and Mageia do not cut themselves into kde, Xfce, edu... editions:
Fedora electronic lab http://spins.fedoraproject.org/fel/ is not seen as independant - though some of its packages cannot be found in Fedora repos, IIRC.
If one adds the UBUlinux variants, their percentage slightly increased between 2011 -19.03%- and 2012 19.96%
There are some other "issues " in the statistics of CD /DVD sales :
* Centos and Scientific can be considered, once installed , as the same... (as the percentage of their sales increased for both of them, and as SL is somewhat small, this does not , in 2011 2012, have consequences in interpretation.)
* If one adds TRK, SRC and PM, they have a very high percentage (8.1 in 2011, 8.5 in 2012) and a very high rank -above Fedora's one-
* Mandriva was not replaced by Mageia (their percentage halved) - IMO, Mageia has less packages, (hard to compile ones) than Mandriva had -ex : scilab : maybe it is the consequence of a choice of packaging only what they could, with less developpers...
It would be interesting to know whether OSdisks ships more 32 bits than 64 bits or not... (is their audience old computers or newer ones -some of them do not have a CD/DVD reader!)
18 • Comparing Apples and Oranges!? (by Vishwanath on 2013-01-14 17:49:42 GMT from India)
#16 Then a better process would be to consider the distro-lineage; e.g. count Ubuntu itself as Debian; count Mint as Ubuntu etc. This way we would also believe that FLOSS is about We against them.
I often see comparisons like Ubuntu Vs. Debian. How do people forget that there is no Ubuntu without Debian. May be even true that I like my buntu because there is Debain behind the buntu.
Incorporating this idea let some do the math again!
19 • Ubermix (by octathlon on 2013-01-14 17:52:44 GMT from United States)
Ubermix looks like a very useful distro, not just for education settings but I can think of other scenarios where this approach would work well. I will test this out on my Eee netbook.
20 • Marrying horses and mules Re 18 (by dbrion on 2013-01-14 18:06:27 GMT from France)
Well, if I download and install a Fedora electronic lab, and after thet, use Fedora's repos to add , say, lyx and abiword (they have no text processing, and it is very annoying sometimes), nothing will break and I got two text processors....
What will happen if you download and install an UBU variant, end then, use the debian repo for complex software -a web browser, a text processor- ?
What will happen if you download and install LUBU and decide you prefer having gnome and use an UBU repo?
21 • re: arch and rolling release updates.. (by brad on 2013-01-14 18:26:57 GMT from United States)
I found a GREAT rule of thumb for Arch is to , when it asks to replace a set of files.. either keep'em all or replace'em all (of course after reading whatever tidbit of info on the main page)...
But God Forbid you bork your system and ask for help(when you don't understand or the wiki doesn't seem to answer the current problem you have, as you can figure out how to describe it).. then you get RTFM, it's in the wiki.. or they copy and paste some excerpt from the wiki about being a "help vampire" or that "you may have to get your hands dirty" or worse.. "arch isn't for you, go back to x,y,z distro"..
Arch>than it's userbase
Manjaro is the way to go..
22 • re: arch and rolling release updates.. (by brad on 2013-01-14 18:27:26 GMT from United States)
I found a GREAT rule of thumb for Arch is to , when it asks to replace a set of files.. either keep'em all or replace'em all (of course after reading whatever tidbit of info on the main page)...
But God Forbid you bork your system and ask for help(when you don't understand or the wiki doesn't seem to answer the current problem you have, as you can figure out how to describe it).. then you get RTFM, it's in the wiki.. or they copy and paste some excerpt from the wiki about being a "help vampire" or that "you may have to get your hands dirty" or worse.. "arch isn't for you, go back to x,y,z distro"..
23 • Apples and oranges, but not lineage (by vw72 on 2013-01-14 18:39:30 GMT from United States)
Using lineage doesn't make sense. Debian has no say over what Ubuntu does. Ubuntu does have a very strong say over what Xubuntu does. On the other hand, Ubuntu has little or no say over what Mint does.
There are true derivatives of Ubuntu that stand on their own, Mint being a prime example. But the "official" Ubuntu derivatives are really no more than the core Ubuntu with *buntu-desktop installed.
Canonical dictates what goes on in Ubuntu and therefore in all of the official derivatives. Even the recent Gnome-buntu (or whatever it is called) has the goal of providing Ubuntu with a gnome-shell desktop. How is that different than Fedora's KDE? Isn't that team trying to provide Fedora, but with the KDE desktop?
If the core of a distribution is to provide the parent distribution but with some superficial change (different desktop, pre-installed codecs, etc), is it truly a different distribution? Particularly if it is using the parent distribution's repositories, kernel, etc.? And if it isn't different, then why break out the Ubuntu equivalents separately?
Here's another reason why it is problematic. From the statistics in the article, it appears that Ubuntu has lost a lot of ground since last year and the implication is that they lost it to Mint. However, by including the official derivatives (like all the other distros do), Ubuntu has actually increased since last year. So, while, Mint has soared, it evidently is gaining most of its market from outside the Ubuntu family of distros.
Looking at the statistics, as presented, leads to one conclusion, looking at them combined, leads to a very different conclusion. Which is correct? Well, looking at the number of dead distributions listed in distrowatch, coupled with the activity on various sites about both Ubuntu and Mint, it would appear that much of Mint's growth, but not all, has come from other than Ubuntu. Or, if it has come from Ubuntu, it has been more than offset by new Ubuntu users (which could mean that Canonical was on target for Unity).
Anyway, my point being, by treating each desktop version of Ubuntu as a totally independent distro while not doing the same for other distros means that casual comparisons can be misleading. Yes, I know, that all of those *buntus want to be viewed as their own independent distros. But one has to ask, even if they have their own governing board, if Ubuntu can trump their decisions, are they really an independent distro (could Gnomebuntu really ship the new Gnome-Files if they wanted to do so)?
24 • Comparing Apples and Oranges! (by jeffersonian@noemail.net on 2013-01-14 19:23:15 GMT from United States)
Comparing Apples and Oranges!
Linux is originally, and still today about the OS kernel, and its drivers, etc...
Fedora like Suse are Red-Hat derivative, not Debian, there are significant differences.
Read-Hat derivative is still the place where lots of Linux Kernel work is being done: the heavy weight lifter. Just try to compile the Linux kernel with Ubuntu or Mint: most utilities do not really work out of the box.
And yes, Ubuntu as well as Mint have done a very nice service by packaging a distro which is relatively (To Red-Hat derivatives) easy to install, and easy to use. This is good, I just wish they did not break the basic Linux tools.
For me I wish I could have the solidness, the latest packages that Fedora provides, with the ease of use of Ubuntu derivatives (like Mint). Ubuntu repositories are often very outdated.
I also wish that every Linux distro would be more multi-boot friendly, because frankly none really is ! If you disagree with this statement, just try to install for example Windows, Mint, and Fedora on the same system. This is indeed possible but still requires lots of manual geek's work !
Most distro want to reformat most partitions, else the install fails, and for /home and /boot this is just silly.
The kernel files (on /boot) should indicate their origin, this is very simple to do....
The promises of GRUB 2 have not yet been fully kept, and that may be due to GRUB's excessive complexity for the task.
I still wish to have a standard Linux Install, the same for all distros, giving the user the option to call "gparted" (An almost perfect example of simplicity and functionality) for partitioning.
Same for the desktop, and here, razor-qt seems quite promising.
---
25 • Comparing apples and oranges (by rop on 2013-01-14 19:23:57 GMT from Spain)
I have always find it funny that so many people take the distrowatch stats so seriously.
Linux MInt is a great and user/newbie friendly distro, and more and more users are joining the Linux MInt community and installing the green distro in their PCs (by the way te Linux MInt forums are really great for newbies with lots of helpful people willing to assist the newbies). But the reason why Linux Mint is number one in Distrowatch is because the default browser in Linux Mint is Firefox, and one of the default bookmarks in the LInux Mint's Firefox is Distrowatch. So most of the Linux Mint users are familiar with Distrowatch (in fact I first met this web when I first installed LM, and I had been using Ubuntu for two years and never heard of Distrowatch)
Ubuntu has never included Distroatch as a default bookmark, and so there are many Ubuntu users that don't even know that Distrowatch exists.
If you see the Alexia or the WOT stats you will see that Ubuntu and even Debian are much more popular than Linuxmint
26 • Favorite Programs (by Ron on 2013-01-14 19:25:09 GMT from United States)
I think a couple might not be open source. I am too lazy to check right now.
In no special order;
These four are used very often.
*Rakarrack (Guitar software amp, also works great with keyboards.)
*Jack (Audio connection kit)
*Audacity (Audio editor)
*Guitarx (Guitar software amp)
----------
*Kamoso (KDE Webcam)
*Openshot (Video Editor)
*Makehuman (3D character design)
*Blender (Modeller)
*Gimp (Image editing)
*Cherrytree (A Hierarchical Note Taking Application)
*Truecrypt (Encryption)
*Geany (light dev environement)
*VLC (media player)
*Yakuake (Drop down terminal)
There are other programs of course, including these, I really love. But these are used the most often.
27 • Fuduntu (by Hollandhook on 2013-01-14 20:26:35 GMT from Mexico)
Nice. I can't seem to get Focuswriter installed and getting fonts to look decent is proving a tough job, because the settings aren't sticking. Otherwise, I'm finding my way around okay and everything's steady. It's the first Gnome 2 distro I've liked enough to want to keep around. Thanks.
28 • Able2extract (by Johannes on 2013-01-14 20:40:03 GMT from Germany)
That's what I call a review! Thank you for pointing out this piece of software, which I needed badly. A pity there is no reliable free software equivalent... Cheers,
Johannes
29 • Manjaro (by Philip Müller on 2013-01-14 21:34:06 GMT from Germany)
I did a remote-update session on one of my customers PCs. From my side it seemed to be fine and I asked her to reboot her system. After a while I got a call-back that something don't work and she wasn't able to boot her system anymore. So I've to visit her tomorrow and see what went wrong.
Sometimes you hit rare issues you might have missed. We are trying to test Arch-Stable a little longer and push those updates as update-packs with documentation weekly instead of daily, but sometimes some bugs are slipping thru due bad timing.
Which makes it even harder are Update-Notifier like kalu, yapan and co. Some even try to update their systems every hour. It might be an update-addiction or some sort of.
It is aways good to have a working install-media you can use to fix issues thru updates.
Read the documentation and never force the update cames in mind ...
Monthly released install-medias are common to keep up with the package-changes.
Sometimes it is hard to simplify a beast ;)
30 • @25 • Comparing apples and oranges (by greg on 2013-01-15 09:40:30 GMT from Slovenia)
That doesn't even make sense. so you are saying that because you have firefox on linux mint wiht a bookmark to distrowatch you would visit this site and read about what Mint is? and Mint reviews? because that's what these starts are showing mostly. how many times someone read a page.
and the previous poster is correct Kubuntu, Xubuntu etc. are not separate distributions since cannonical has plenty of say into what stuff is added.
oh and i haven't tried this myself but i believe CentOS and Scientific are not one and the same. as it was proven in one install comparison. additionally as i remember at the time i read how centos hasn't got their patch while scientific linux already made them.
31 • @24 (by Mac on 2013-01-15 11:28:55 GMT from United States)
I have xp, kubuntu 12.04, mepis, kubuntu 12.10, and aptosid with no problem. Have had mint in the mix in the past. Just watch the install, suse you have to look at every page, fedora 17 works been a while but it was in there. Kubuntu is real easy. Have fun Mack
32 • @29 Manjaro as a desktop system? (by django on 2013-01-15 11:41:17 GMT from Netherlands)
Philip,
why have you decided to use Manjaro for a not so tech savvy user as described in your posting here? I'm curious as to how these decisions are made.
33 • Apple, oranges, pineapples, strawberries, horses , mules and ntfs. RE 30 (by dbrion on 2013-01-15 11:56:13 GMT from France)
"as i remember at the time i read how centos hasn't got their patch while scientific linux already made them."
Well, as both clone RH independently, it may happen that one is newer than the other. The Big Patch Issue with Centos happened (a patch was one month late, and upset the fora) , IIRC, before 2010; as there was no other one, some people somehow remembered it...:
I doubt it has consequences now and that many people draw conclusion w/r Centos to-days performances .
"CentOS and Scientific are not one and the same. as it was proven in one install comparison. "
Do **install** comparisons "prove" anything? People who **use** Centos or Scientific (or both, as I did) do not like to install (they can, with great sufferings, as their favorite hobby is not distro(s)hopping). Having them suffering for 10 minutes instead of 14 is a very short lapse of time w/r the intended life of stable distributions.
From an user point of view, they are the same (unless one wants to mount ntfs external disk(s) , but it is not a GNUlinux distribution issue: it is the only difference I saw when using).
34 • @31 (by Mac on 2013-01-15 12:50:06 GMT from United States)
They also work with Win 7.
Have fun Mack
35 • @33 (by greg on 2013-01-15 13:51:37 GMT from Slovenia)
well they are compiled from same source. like i said i only know what i read. i do not use them. i read reviews linked to from this site. i read them because i still plan (when i have a bit more money) to set up my own server and i am interested in RHEL based distros and debain as both are stable and good for such mashcines. also my first brush with linux was red hat.
i know that for example debian and ubuntu are similar but there are differences. the problem with these distros is they keep moving things arround or sometimes ubuntu adds some commands. for example init command for ssh from 10.04 and i imagine also in Debian failed for some reason but service restart worked well.
but many distros are same under the hood (very similar to eachother), and maybe have only a few subtle differences that make them "different".
36 • CentOS/Scientific Linux/Springdale Linux (by Caitlyn Martin on 2013-01-15 15:12:24 GMT from United States)
dbrion is half right :) CentOS did have an issue over roughly a two year period where they were frequently and chronically late with patches, sometimes as much as two months late with critical security patches. LWN covered it heavily, I wrote an article for O'Reilly, and Ladislav highlighted yet more articles in the DWW news section. However, that ended when CentOS went to the Continuous Release (CR) repository. Over the past year and a half CentOS has actually been the fastest on average of the three major Red Hat clones in terms of delivering patches. The developers really and truly have solved that problem. (Reminder to self: write follow-up article as promised to the CentOS developers and community.)
At their core, CentOS, Scientific Linux, and Springdale Linux (formerly PUIAS Linux) are all compiled from the same Red Hat srpms with only the branding/trademarks removed. To that extent they are the same. They differ in the extra packages they offer, the various installation configurations they offer (i.e.: Scientific Linux offers a light version with an IceWM desktop) and they all have separate repositotories.
37 • Horses and mules (by dbrion on 2013-01-15 15:25:35 GMT from France)
Even the choice of packages can make two computers, having the same distribution, different ... and the differences might be not that subtle.
Dogs can be different between others (just have a look at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/62/Big_and_little_dog.jpg/220px-Big_and_little_dog.jpg ) , but can be interfertile... (but try to marry an he dog and a she bear)...
I am sure SL repos and Centos ones (or common ones) can be shared ,though it is not seen as a good practice...with less issues than would occur if, say, a Debian user wanted to use UBU linux binaries....
Adding together sales figures of Scientific and Centos would not be utterly stupid (and this is why, in post 17, I noticed it -and noticed it would have no consequences in interpretation as both distributions slightly increased).
They have the same important packages, have the same audience (people interested in RH, but not willing to spend a lot of money without testing....
Adding together xUBU would make sense (the same sense as ignoring Fedora's has many desktops and remains unique, or Mandriva could offer a menu to choose, just after booting, which desktop to use in 2008 -making the nature of desktops pointless in distributions separation) ...,
38 • #37: Combined numbers (by Caitlyn Martin on 2013-01-15 16:22:20 GMT from United States)
I don't think combining page hit rankings (I assume that's what you mean by "sales numbers") for CentOS, Scientific Linux, Springdale Linux and Stella would be fair at all. They all have separate development teams and different goals. The first three have their own repositories. They all have their own forums and their own communities. By any reasonable standard that qualifies them as different distributions.
Yes, under the hood the code is essentially the same. From an end user perspective they aren't the same at all. Stella really is just a respin of CentOS but the focus is squarely on the desktop. A lot of people seem to find it difficult to turn CentOS into a desktop oriented distro. Stella does that for them. Similarly, if someone has older, legacy equipment then Scientific Linux with IceWM is a lot easier to get going than the other three. There are similar issues for server deployments as well largely due to differences in the extra packages.
39 • Combining numbers (by dbrion on 2013-01-15 17:09:45 GMT from France)
Well, I did not want to combine
* page hit rankings (nobody knows they are there because people are curious about a distribution or because they looove their favorite one; anyways, it is there everyday, and, if someone was able to analyse these PHRs in a convincing way, one would have known it), but
* this weeks OSdisks.com's sales evolution between 2011 and 2012 (sale numbers are more than curiosity or love, as people are ready to pay...).
I (and my collegues) use CentOS at work, as a desktop, without any issues... Our boss buies RH for servers.... (I suppose that, if we were dissatisfied with Centoses, he mignt be more reluctant to buy RH) I used Scientific for ease of mounting ntfs partitions, compatibility with my work and because their live DVD had almost everything I needed -so , I did not need to compile it- and found out it was almost the same thing ... For a browser, a text processor (this is 95 % of what people need at Internet Cafes -exception : Skype or other speech software and games- and at work -besides specialized software, in this latter case-), there are no differences....
When CentOS had difficulties in 2010, people had the idea of using SL . This indicates they are very near .... Vicinity/neighborhood does not mean they are the same, I am aware of it.
But two Centoses, given to two people with different tastes, might be much more different than a Centos differs from a SL...
Combining numbers would have made a 25 lines table easier to read; in the case of Centos+SL, there would have been no errors of interpretation (if combining was an error) , as *both* increased between 2011 and 2012. I already noticed that, as I am aware it is somewhat controversial -but the consequences in interpretation are not (interpretation is just made easier) -
May be I am very unfair with people supporting Centos, but, in 4 years, noone of my colleagues and I needed help and support from their fora (I learnt things from them, but it was not failures related, it was out of curiosity) . This explains I cannot understand, at least spontaneously, that a communauty is part of a distribution.
But SL having an IceWM does not make two distibutions out of SL... Why are {a,b,X,L,,K, ...z} UBUs seen as different distributions, with the same criteria than for SL?
40 • HazeOS (by votre on 2013-01-15 17:45:02 GMT from United States)
Once again a new distro is making the false claim about invulnerability.
From the HazeOS website:
"Since Haze OS is based on Linux, There is no question of Viruses here. Install Haze and stop worrying about Anti Viruses."
Statements like that drives me insane.
It is factually incorrect and potentially misleading. Although the risk of malware is significantly lessened running Linux, it hasn't been eliminated - nor should the potential for such risk be completely ignored. Especially by a distro catering to people who just want to "load it up and go."
41 • @17 (by David on 2013-01-15 19:14:14 GMT from United States)
This is the second time I've seen you complain about Mageia not having a scilab package, but it does have it! Also, yes Mageia has less packages than Mandriva, but Mandriva has tons of old unmaintained packages, many of which do not compile or work anymore. Even they have been cleaning some of these out and continue to do so. As for Mageia, the packages that have been imported have been the ones that people have actually been interested in. Someone needs to maintain all of those packages. If there are any other specific packages you feel are missing that you are interested in, you can request them in the bugzilla.
42 • RE 41 (by dbrion on 2013-01-15 20:16:00 GMT from France)
Well, I messed up scilab missing in Mageia with it missing in Fedora (at least in 2011- they have fixed it, some of my colleagues like scilab but I have no time using everything and do not complain). Maybe it was my being stupid and too much distro(s)hopping and adding things.... I was not unhappy with Mageia 1...
I confirm I use Fedora now -and I tried Mageia2 for a brief time, but cannot try all the versions (normally, I used Fedora after I had developped on Mandriva,/Mageia 1 as I prefered Mandriva)...
Now I am afraid I have *too many** packages (qemu-arm, qemu-x86, {avr,msp430,x86,arm}-{gcc,size,nm}, msp-debug) which may seem very exotic (not the x86 ones) and I can manage to download from upstream and compile -if a distributor supports them, I am very happy; else, I manage- plus the classical ones (bash,vim, make, text processor, browser, {pdf,png,any}viewer) . I never will ask a distributor to add them....
43 • Fedora 18 (by Woody Oaks on 2013-01-15 21:35:08 GMT from United States)
Does anyone know how to circumvent the installer's automatic partition selector which, on my system, seems to want to consume either my entire hard drive or some tiny portion of it which that installer deems to be too small for use. I have installed various Linux systems for ten years now and have always found every installer I encountered to be goofy in some way, but this one seems to be the dumbest by far.
44 • @43 (by Mac on 2013-01-16 01:19:47 GMT from United States)
I have the same problem it wants /dev/sda2 and I want /dev/sda3 this is the first one I have not been able to past in about 5yrs. Any help would be a big thank you.
Have fun Mack
45 • #43 Fedora install (by Chris H on 2013-01-16 01:28:02 GMT from United States)
"If you don't know what to do, do what you can do". That's what my Steam Engineering instructor at the USMMA used to say.
Select your disk.
Click 'Continue', lower right corner.
Set your time zone.
For 'Partition Scheme Configuration', deselect 'LVM' select 'Standard Partition".
Click 'I don't need help...'
Continue to next screen.
A lot of 'Unknown Linux Partition' s are shown.
Click the + next to each one until you see where you want to install.
Select it. Configure it.
Add mount point /.
Select 'reformat'
A lot of orange triangles will indicate things to be done.
Go to next screen, Start Install.
Do a yum update immediately after the install.
Beware /etc/adjtime might have UTC instead of LOCAL.
Watch your time after you reboot
Chris H
46 • Re 45 (by Woody Oaks on 2013-01-16 03:31:22 GMT from United States)
Thank you, Chris. I had performed some or perhaps even all of those actions before, but had not waited long enough for the system to acquiesce. The installation is now proceeding (on another machine) into some sort of blank-screen-phase. I have installed and used various Linux systems since the days of Red Hat 7, but I have never encountered such a scatterbrained mess as this one. And let me add that Fedora 17 has become progressively less usable over the past months with boot-times grown excessively long and even hanging in a loop ever more frequently. The weekly (at least) kernel updates are nuisances which lead me to suspect that the distribution itself has developed some fundamental problems.
47 • Fedora's NEW installer (by RollMeAway on 2013-01-16 06:24:12 GMT from United States)
BEWARE it will install grub2 to your MBR without mention or warning.
I had a tough time understanding the new installer, so paid very close attention to every detail.
I naively expected some interaction with the installer, about the boot loader, after the system was copied to the partition.
NEVER happened. Just said reboot your system.
It wiped the extended partition table as well.
Way to go Fedora! Throw out that old, well seasoned installer that worked so well.
Give us a smart installer that knows whats best for us. No questions asked.
We needed something else to bitch about.
48 • Fedora 18 (by Dave Postles on 2013-01-16 08:44:25 GMT from United Kingdom)
I don't like the installer or the package manager (YumExtender or whatever it's called). YumExtender is a reason to revert to the CLI. I was quite happy with Fedora 17 XFCE, but I've temporarily given up on Fedora. I'll see what 19 is like later in the year.
Viruses: I always install clamtk - don't want to pass along junk to others.
49 • midori - the little browser that can? (by gnomic on 2013-01-16 11:14:17 GMT from New Zealand)
Anybody with opinions to offer on how Midori functions on the www these days? I was going to do a grumpy old man as to why sundry distros are including Midori instead of a 'real' browser even on DVD editions, but was pleasantly surprised in recent use when 0.4.7 stayed up for some hours of browsing instead of terminating abnormally inside 30 minutes as often happened in previous versions in my experience.
50 • Re 47: (by Woody Oaks on 2013-01-16 19:06:51 GMT from United States)
Is there a way to avoid that? I hate Grub2 and certainly don't want it infecting my MBR. For that matter, is there a way to install Legacy Grub on Fedora now that it has been so greatly improved? Re 47: Is it now illegal to use command line Yum with Fedora? Is that now impossible as well?
51 • Arch Linux (@ #9, #13, #15, #21) (by Pierre on 2013-01-16 19:10:26 GMT from Germany)
As I told often in the last few posts here at the comments to the DWWs I am changing distros quite frequently and only stopped for openSUSE 12.2 on my workstation PC last year. I won't change that in the near future because it runs fast and stable since I installed and set it up.
On my laptop I have replaced openSUSE 12.2 with Arch recently. I am quite happy with it as I always had been for quite some time after installing it.
To avoid misunderstandings: before I do updates I always - even in the past - checked for announcements on the Arch Linux homepage. Nevertheless after a few months of using Arch Linux I always - as experienced by other too - ended up with errors which were more or less fixable. Sometimes I had no time or wasn't willing to once again fix my OS because an update messed it up.
I know, as common to the Arch Linux community I would become some comment like "Then boy move on, Arch isn't made for you if that turns you away from using it.".
Seriously, I understand that a rolling release distro needs some user intervention before an update. That's ok for me and I am not afraid of the command line as well.
But: I simple don't want end up with errors frequently that need to be fixed. That is very time consuming and the rolling release model's one big advantage should be, that it does not take time for re-installing and re-configuring each 6 to 12 months.
Honestly, it takes me less time to re-install openSUSE each 8 to 9 months, copy over my i3 (and apps related) config files and re-install my frequently used apps instead of tinkering around on errors every few weeks / months because some update messed up my system.
Considering this I find misleading that on the Wiki they say something like "It just needs to frequently do pacman -Syu to stay up to date."
In fact it needs a lot more than that beforehand and sometimes even afterwards. Just a thought I had when installing Arch lately.
But I am still using Arch, yes, I really like it and therefore am giving it tries from time to time again. But until now I always turned away in the end because of a messed up system.
Let's see if it will be different this time. :-)
Greetings from Germany.
Pierre
52 • Adam Williamson (by Chris H on 2013-01-16 19:35:55 GMT from United States)
Where's Adam Williamson?
Does he still work for Fedora/Red Hat?
He could probably best answer Fedora 18 questions.
Chris H.
53 • @47-new Fedora installer and GRUB (by Ralph on 2013-01-16 20:59:22 GMT from Canada)
The installer on the generic NON-live DVD has an option to not install grub to the MBR, but it is easy to miss because the whole process is not structured very clearly. After you click on "target of installation" (I forget the exact wording), pictures of your hard drives show up, and you can click on the drive you want to install to. At the same time, in tiny blue print at the bottom left of the screen there is an option for further configuration. When you click on it you get a window that tells you the disc you selected will be the boot disc. I inferred from this that the bootloader would be installed to the MBA of that (selected) hard drive, so I highlighted the disc in the window and unchecked the boot loader. It sounds like GRUB will now not be installed at all, but I guess it gets installed to the root partition instead, as I was able to boot into it (after install) from the GRUB of my default boot distro (after running update-grub). (Further tinkering allows one to install to any partition the hard drive.) Anyways, everything went relatively smoothly, though I admit the new installer is not exactly a gem of perspicuity.
54 • new Fedora installer (ref. 53) (by RollMeAway on 2013-01-17 03:15:10 GMT from United States)
My disastrous fedora install used "Fedora-18-i686-live-kde" DVD, dated 01/09/2013.
It is possible something like you describe, exists on the live installer as well, although,
I did explore ALL "little blue texts", buttons, options, etc.
I will NOT be using it again to find out.
55 • @54 (by Mac on 2013-01-17 14:47:01 GMT from United States)
That is also the way I look at Fedora too. Not fast enough to download the dvd so will wait on opensuse. Most of the time here is between the keyboard and chair, but that new installer is not for me. Have fun Mack
56 • @26 multiboot friendliness (by Tom on 2013-01-17 15:52:05 GMT from United States)
" also wish that every Linux distro would be more multi-boot friendly, because frankly none really is ! If you disagree with this statement, just try to install for example Windows, Mint, and Fedora on the same system. This is indeed possible but still requires lots of manual geek's work !
Most distro want to reformat most partitions, else the install fails, and for /home and /boot this is just silly."
Have you tried recently? I had a Win7 box and Installed Kubuntu 11 on it. It automatically set up the dual boot (I actually didn't want this. I wanted to run Windows in my virtualbox but this will do). I just added Fedora 18 and now can triple boot without having done anything.
57 • Multiboot friendly +1 (by Somewhat Reticent on 2013-01-17 16:45:24 GMT from United States)
I prefer to test a new distro by multibooting live from flash, without wasting drive storage space or burning plastic discs. "Works well with others" is a plus on a resumé.
The Puppy Linux community of developers offers a variety of bootloaders and install options - frugal or full, partition or MBR, Grub4dOS or Grub2 (or LiLo?), based on your choice of several distros. Clearly it's doable.
Microsoft doesn't think Windows needs to get along with others. Many distros share this arrogant laziness. [See also: Grub2Win project at SourceForge]
58 • multibootusb - a project at sourceforge (by Fairly Reticent on 2013-01-19 00:32:28 GMT from United States)
This may have a long way to go to catch up to PenDriveLinux's YUMI but it's a start.
59 • openSUSE - CRUX (by Landor on 2013-01-19 07:49:44 GMT from Canada)
openSUSE seems to be having problems with their torrents, at least for the KDE 32 and 64bit versions. I rarely look at openSUSE at all for a multitude of legitimate reasons, and now they don't even have the torrents setup right. For a community that relies on goodwill more than most, I have no idea why torrents are barely given a second thought.
I'm very happy to see CRUX hit the 3.0 release, and it being 64bit! It's really nice to know there's bastions of sanity still left in this community where real users can turn to. Knowing they won't have to hear from the click-click kiddie-distribution install crowd complain about installers, codecs not present, making it so easy they don't have to pay attention and no longer worrying about knowing they're the reason their mbr or data gets overwritten every time they 'play' with a new distribution.
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
60 • Fedora 18 (by Colin on 2013-01-19 10:09:37 GMT from United Kingdom)
Is it me or have they made the installer more complicated than it needs to be? Prefered the old installer myself.
61 • Nexus 7 / Android weirdness running Mint 14 MATE... (by Kevin Scribner on 2013-01-20 00:04:31 GMT from United States)
hey there, DW people --
this is an extension of a request for help i'd made here some weeks ago...
background: i have an emachines M250 netbook which i finally wiped Windows 7 Starter Edition off of and installed Mint 14 MATE... it's been all peaches and cream with one minor exception: i have a Google Nexus 7 Android tablet [Asus, really], the 8GB model [since discontinued], and when i plugged it into the netbook via USB, absolutely nothing happened... so, i posted my issue here, and several fine folk came to the rescue with excellent advice... which, sadly, did not solve the problem, but at least i had directions to look in...
at the end of the day, i was able to set the Nexus to be read as a camera, rather than a multimedia / storage device, and i could access the two ["DCIM" & "Pictures"] follders in which pictures are stored therein, but no other folders were visible... heartened by partial success, i kept plugging away at it, researching the issue on the web...
so, today, i tried the methodologies described on the following pages, in the following order:
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/888
http://blog.mpshouse.com/?p=609
http://blog.jeshurun.ca/technology/connecting-the-google-nexus-7-to-ubuntu-mint-over-usb
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/1185
now, the last one seems to have worked... when i plug the nexus in and then open a terminal and type in "go-mtpfs /media/MyAndroid" [minus the quotes, of course], i get a MyAndroid icon on the desktop which i can explore and use like any other device -- success...!!!
sort of...
point the first: i HAVE TO keep that terminal window open until i later unmount the device, or else all hell breaks loose... not such a high price to pay, though...
but here's the real problem... after following the 4th set of instructions, those steps somehow interacted with one of the other sets of instructions, because now when i plug in the Nexus, a "Nexus7" icon appears... i can explore it, with limited success, but i cannot unmount it later... when i do [from the GUI], i get an error window stating:
"umount: /media/Nexus7 is not in the fstab (and you are not root)"
[minus the quotes...]
the nautilus window for that Nexus7 icon tends to freeze up a lot, and i don't know if i can safely just unplug the Nexus, so i've been shutting down the machine before unplugging...
interestingly, when i run the command lines indicated in that fourth tutorial, i get the MyAndroid icon, which operates much more effectively than the Nexus7 icon in Nautilus, right underneath the Nexus7 icon, and i unmount that by command line as per the instructions [i haven't scripted them, i just keep the instructions in a note on the desktop and enter them manually into a terminal window... the second terminal which i use to unmount the MyAndroid icon, makes the MyAndroid icon disappear and returns the first terminal window, which i used to mount it in the first place, to an active command line after yielding up some usage statistics...
i'm still a Linux n00b, only been plugging away at it for a few years, but i'd like to have a better understanding of what's going on here and what i can do about it, particularly about the Nexus7 icon... i don't mind that the interface where my Nexus 7 isn't so "perfect" as it may have been under Windows 7, so long as i'm able to get the job done without too terribly much foolishness and difficulty...
sorry i went on so long about it, but i wanted to provide as much information as possible to get better replies... any insights would be deeply appreciated...
thanks for reading, and thanks to the DW folks for getting so much great Linux and open-source information out there, and for providing a forum like this for n00bs like me to get answers and ideas and education...
peace --
-- khs
62 • Fedora 18 - syslog? (by gnomic on 2013-01-20 01:46:01 GMT from New Zealand)
Running Fedora 18 live DVD the other day I wanted to have a look at what syslog might have to say about a wee issue. Off to /var/log I went ... but no syslog to be seen. Has there been some technological advance I have missed, or ought I to have been the superuser rather than merely liveuser? It seems that syslog may be on the way out, but I thought not quite yet.
Number of Comments: 62
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