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1 • OpenMandriva (by Zybersun on 2013-06-24 09:58:43 GMT from United States)
So Mandriva now has OpenMadriva, which is not based on Mandriva itself but based on a Mandriva fork, ROSA. I would like to say huh? Has Mandriva gotten that bad they won't even base anything on it or am I missing something here?
2 • PC-BSD (by Fencemeister717 on 2013-06-24 11:30:42 GMT from United States)
The decision to drop 386 from future builds certainly is a sad event. Particularly in light of the snooping by the powers that be and the need for a superior OS as far as safety goes. As a blogger, I find my peace of mind a bit jilted. I suppose I'll be seeking out another option for that particular desktop. I already use GhostBSD on my other 386 desktop so I suppose I'll put it on this one too. At least until Erik can no longer tweak it to work for us. Besides, Ghost has a CD sized version for those of us "po' folk" who can't afford upgraded machines. Anyways, thanks for all your efforts PC-BSD
3 • Rosa Application Menu (by DavidEF on 2013-06-24 11:51:07 GMT from United States)
Interesting to see that Rosa, while using KDE, has changed the appearance of the Application Menu so that it "resembles the Unity Dash or GNOME Shell's menu." It seems the Gnome folks and Canonical aren't the only ones who think it's a better way to present menu choices. I know for myself, I always have had a tendency toward well-spaced, large icons for my application menus, even in Windows XP and Seven. I do think the Dash still needs to be polished up a bit. It still takes more effort than it should to get the menu entry I'm looking for sometimes, using the search function.
4 • Open Mandriva (by Dave Postles on 2013-06-24 12:08:41 GMT from United Kingdom)
@ #1 I think you are missing something. Mandriva already had the Rosa features before OpenMandriva, I believe, as they collaborated closely.
5 • @4 OpenMandriva (by DavidEF on 2013-06-24 13:38:56 GMT from United States)
Dave, I think post #1 was talking from the standpoint of the anouncement above about OpenMandriva as a new distribution added to waiting list. The second sentence says "It is based on ROSA, a Russian Linux distribution project which forked Mandriva Linux in 2012, incorporating many of Mandriva's original tools and utilities and adding in-house enhancements." which actually makes both of you right, sorta.
6 • Farewell 32 bit architecture (by BAM on 2013-06-24 14:02:32 GMT from United States)
The 32 bit architecture is obsolete. New builds of Win7 and Ubuntu, where I work are 64bit. Any laptop with 2 cpus are being upgraded to 64bit. The i386 has been obsolete for at least three years. For those who need 32bit. download a copy of your favorite O/S and burn to CD or DVD, for future use. Update your current system and use Remastersys.
@4-you are correct.
7 • PC-BSD (by silent on 2013-06-24 14:18:19 GMT from France)
I tried a recent rolling release snapshot of PC-BSD. It didn't work with my integrated Intel video card, only with the vesa driver or after some tweaking. Otherwise the monitor just lost the video signal during booting. Switching to rolling release may require a new approach to testing. On the other hand, I think that building a desktop from stable vanilla FreeBSD is easy and transparent. I hope that they are not going to switch to systemd anytime soon;).
8 • ROSA and Zorin (by Shashi Warrier on 2013-06-24 14:31:59 GMT from India)
For the past few months I've been trying out distros on a Toshiba C850 Satellite laptop. I've tried out both ROSA and Zorin in the last few days - live and installed versions in both cases - and find your review of ROSA spot-on. Some of the ideas are great but implementation is spotty. For instance, I tried to install FBReader using urpmi and failed, getting different sets of error messages each time. Calibre came on fine, though.
Zorin, for all its claims of being configurable, isn't. The dock options aren't anywhere near as good as the gnome-2 panel options. For all its failings, though, it has a solid feel to it.
Both distros are a little slow on underpowered computers (like mine). I don't mind because I'm a writer and like to fiddle with software while thinking out a story in the back of my mind, but anyone impatient to get on with the job would do well to put these distros on a fast machine with plenty of RAM and a good quick hard disk.
9 • ROSA and OpenMandriva (by Carlos Felipe on 2013-06-24 14:36:36 GMT from Brazil)
What's the difference between ROSA and OpenMandriva?
10 • Puppy (by Hugo Masse on 2013-06-24 15:09:33 GMT from Mexico)
So, Dedoimedo set out to find out differences between Puppy editions and only found that he liked one set of icons better than the other (which can be changed in a few clicks)? he he he, c'mon!
He's right about one thing, though: Puppy Linux is phenomenal, no wonder why it's always near the top ten in DW's list and in my son's usb thumbdrive... he loves playing around with it while he's unadvertedly learning Linux! Kudos to Barry!!
11 • Re: Zorin OS 7 (by eco2geek on 2013-06-24 15:13:45 GMT from United States)
I really like Zorin 7's default desktop, as well as its GNOME panel mode. (The distro is based on Ubuntu 13.04, so it's not actually GNOME 2 at all, it's GNOME 3.6's "fallback mode" with Compiz for effects.) It's fast, and it looks good, as did Zorin 6.
There are two problems with it, though, which have been brought up by other people in prior DWW comment threads. First of all, it uses AWN (Avant Window Navigator), which hasn't seen an update since 2010 and, AFAICT, isn't even in Ubuntu 13.04's repositories. Second, fallback mode no longer exists in GNOME 3.8.
It would be interesting to hear from the distro's developers how they plan on overcoming those two potential obstacles to Zorin OS's future.
12 • Webconverger (by Ismail Arslangiray on 2013-06-24 15:58:18 GMT from United States)
I downloaded and installed it. You can not even test it without making payments
13 • @ #7 (by Pierre on 2013-06-24 17:08:19 GMT from Germany)
I think that systemd is not such a bad thing. It's not difficult to edit a config file to deal with daemons. To deal with every deamon the same way, and being able to handle every single aspect via one utility with simple commands like systemctl start unit / systemctl stop unit / systemctl restart unit etc. nevertheless is a very nice and elegant way.
So maybe sometimes such things are only rejected because it is simply new and differnt to the way people got used to deal with deamons and services.
But this does not mean it's a bad thing or idea and I personally like systemd for delivering a unified way of handling services and deamons.
14 • @4 (by Zybersun on 2013-06-24 17:31:28 GMT from United States)
My point was why didn't they base it just on Mandriva then? I mean if they had the tools, or at least most of them, that ROSA now has, why base it on a fork rather than the "original?" So in reality this is not a fork from Mandriva but a fork from ROSA, which of course is forked from Mandriva. It is a bit misleading to call it OpenMandriva. Maybe calling it ROSA 2.0 would be more appropriate.
15 • Mandriva/Rosa (by Dave Postles on 2013-06-24 20:29:14 GMT from United Kingdom)
Mandriva used the Rosa modified-KDE desktop and panel in its last iterations. Mandriva and Rosa collaborated. It's called OpenMandriva presumably because it is being developed by the remaining people at Mandriva who didn't form Mageia. I suspect that all they mean is that they use the Rosa desktop and panel which was already in use in Mandriva.
16 • @15 (by Zybersun on 2013-06-24 21:12:39 GMT from United States)
I guess that makes sense. Mandriva always had a weird way of doing things. While I am more of a fan of Mageia I hope this works out for OpenMandriva.
17 • PC-BSD (by Franklin Adams on 2013-06-24 23:01:57 GMT from United States)
Good for them, I'm glad they're facing the future without having the anchor of i386 and other legacy architectures around their neck, given the size of their development community, its an unnecessary burden that they don't need. The Linux world can generally stand to learn a thing or two from the various BSDs and this is no exception.
And Bam, its the same situation with me. At work everything in Windows, BSD (including Darwin/MacOS) and Linux has gone to x86_64, including the servers. And when I think about it I haven't had a personal machine that wasn't x86_64 since the Athlon 64 came out in 2003. It just makes sense to move with the technology, and considering it is fairly mature technology, its about time.
18 • OpenMandriva (by uz64 on 2013-06-25 00:18:16 GMT from United States)
And there I was, thinking (hoping) that with a new name and project, OpenMandriva would return to its roots and ditch the retarded "Rosa" desktop and bring back its complete lack of flexibility that Mandriva put out. Oh well... there's always Mageia, which runs laps around it these days.
19 • Jesse Rosa (by mandog on 2013-06-25 00:48:28 GMT from Peru)
I downloaded Rosa Fresh at the weekend no problems installing on my 1212 amd6 core based system with nvidia GPU. In fact I was quite surprised, it found both my sound cards
HDMI and anolog. the sound card setup let me choice which card I want to use. The video card setup let me choose free or non free then offered to download the latest nvidia driver and set it up. I had a few updates. then installed a bunch of new aplications with no problem after I realized if you want to install the latest you need to click on the latest, A bit confusing but not hard to figure out. My biggest gripe is the settings menu great idea fully functional when it decides to give you the text up to a couple of mins? I found it fast but a bit heavy on memory if you don't have much but not excessive. The other gripe is RPM dependencies take VLC install It won't play much as you have to install every codec individually. Now take Arch Linux. pacman tells you if there are any extra codecs etc and lets you choose which ones to download, thats a advanced package manager.
20 • Deepin Linux (by Chanath on 2013-06-25 02:44:33 GMT from Sri Lanka)
I think you guys should look into Deepin Linux 12.12. It has an interesting menu shell, which feels much better than Gnome 3 or Unity shell. Its in one page, which you can scroll down, but the most interesting fact is when you bring your cursor to any category, it comes up without clicking. In all such shell type menus - Gnome shell, Rosa shell, Slingshot, Unity - I had seen yet, one has to click on a category to bring the contents up.
It has a user maunal, which is different fom any I've seen yet. It has some little bugs, just like any distro, but when you ask about it, the forum and the developers react very fast. A developer/foum memeber would say, he'd monitor the progress of correcting the bug and the user would get it asap.
Deepin's default colour scheme is softer, but you can choose any amount of wallpapers fom the links, its System Settings have. Deepin has quite a lot of new apps, Deepin Software center, Dplayer, Dmusic, Deepin System Settings etc
Its been a long time since I downloaded, say, a "cute" distro, which is really snappy. I wish the Deepin developers all the best.
21 • PC-BSD and i386 (by Thomas Mueller on 2013-06-25 03:29:26 GMT from United States)
One great downside of PC-BSD dropping i386 is losing the ability to run MS-Windows applications with wine. Currently, wine for 32-bit is much more developed than 64-bit wine, and building wine on FreeBSD amd64 requires building a 32-bit i386 system to run from /compat/i386 . I built wine just a day or two ago, haven't yet had time to run it. I never installed or ran PC-BSD, first because it was too heavy for my old computer with 256 MB RAM, also because I prefer to decide what applications I want to build from the FreeBSD ports system rather than let PC-BSD decide for me.
22 • 64bit Q (by Toran Korshnah on 2013-06-25 04:16:26 GMT from Belgium)
I suppose on 64bit Firefox is replaced by Waterfox or Pale Moon? Planning to return to Linux or BSD soon again. Just want to know, as Firefox is 32bit.
23 • Compiz... (by Chanath on 2013-06-25 04:43:23 GMT from Sri Lanka)
Ubuntu Unity is based on Compiz, and some other Ubuntu based distros are too, but Compiz is a dead project. So, it looks like that the Ubuntu devs ar emaintaining it for the time to keep Ubuntu Unity going. Deepin Linux also had forked Compiz, and changed the plugin behaviour for their disro. Would Wayland development catch up quickly?
24 • ROSA 2012 (by RollMeAway on 2013-06-25 05:04:33 GMT from United States)
Shouldn't that be 2013.6? Sounds like last years release.
I'm sure the ROSA menu filling the screen with large icons, satisfies the smart phone/tablet addicts. Choice is good.
Fortunately, the traditional kde menu can be easily added to the panel.
Having the mandriva control panel merged into the kde panel is nice, IF you run kde!
Should you choose LXDE, XFCE, e17, etc, NO control panel.
Tried to install "drakconf-legacy". It failed due to dependencies.
25 • Mandriva and OpenMandriva (by Vivek on 2013-06-25 05:27:17 GMT from India)
Mandriva doesn't have a free download today, only their SOHO edition. They based on in Mageia, but because of a breakdown of relations with Mageia, this is only a stop gap arrangement. They don't have the manpower to continue development themselves parallelly, so that's why they set up OpenMandriva, a fully community distro.
They could've simply based on ROSA directly, but having OpenMandriva as an intermediate allows ROSA to benefit as well. For example urmpi is planned to be replaced in OpenMandriva, something that won't happen first in ROSA. Plus patches from Mageia and PCLOS get passed on to ROSA.
So best to look at OpenMandriva as the Fedora of the Mandriva world. A complicated arrangement, but looking forward to seeing it work well. ROSA editions are complicated enough already, look at this link:
http://www.rosalab.com/blogs/rosa-announces-plans-for-future-product
26 • @ 22 / 64 bit (by MZ on 2013-06-25 06:04:28 GMT from United States)
Firefox has been available in official 64bit builds for Linux for some time now:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox#CPU_architecture
@ 17
Some versions of Linux don't see 32 bit as a priority, but I for one think it's good that many still have the option. I use old 32 bit hardware 24/7 for a firewall box between me & the internet, & I use it on an old 2.5 Ghz backup computer as well. There is loads of useful old hardware out there that still has lots of potential life left in it. I for one am glad that there are so many good Linux options around for those old machines.
27 • Deepin Desktop Environment (by Marcus on 2013-06-25 08:47:44 GMT from Switzerland)
The new Deepin Desktop Environment that has been introduced in 12.12 is not based on GNOME Shell but Compiz
28 • PC-BSD (by Pierre on 2013-06-25 11:19:59 GMT from Germany)
I highly appreciate the work done by the PC-BSD project. It makes for a good BSD alternative to most common Linux distributions. And it's nice to see that BSD has a good and easier to use alternative to most of the BSDs that are aimed at more advanced users.
Nevertheless I think I would prefer to dig into FreeBSD instead of let PC-BSD do most of this for me. Additionally the pbi packages are maybe a good idea but I cannot understand why they don't make use of pkg-ng, the next generation package manager that is delivered with FreeBSD and is as comfortable to use as the apt delivered with Debian.
Nevertheless, back to main topic: The focus on 64bit is a good choice for PC-BSD because it is quite heavy anyway and not really suitable for older hardware than 64bit computers. And since 32bit PCs are becoming rare it's no big loss either.
Just my two cents. :)
Greetings.
29 • 32 bit vs 64 bit (by dragonmouth on 2013-06-25 11:41:38 GMT from United States)
Oh, how quickly we dismiss older technology. Just because YOU happen to be using bleeding edge 64 bit system does not mean that everybody else in the world also has 64 bit system available to them. While not blazing fast PC-BSD and most Linux distros run quite well on 32 bit systems. There is no need just yet to consign 32 bit systems to running only Slitaz, DSL or Puppy.
30 • @29 (by Smellyman on 2013-06-25 12:06:23 GMT from United States)
64 bit is far from bleeding edge.
Deepin looks great, going to check it out now...
31 • "Fedora 19" RC2 is excellent (by Jeffersonian on 2013-06-25 14:55:31 GMT from United States)
Upgraded to Fedora 19 Beta, this was easy, seamless: everything still worked after the upgrade, this was easy, seamless: everything still worked after the upgrade. This is probably the first time I had a successful Linux distro major version upgrade, with any Linux distro (I used many) and hope that Fedora will keep this valuable feature working.
Tried several windows managers, including razor-qt.
Decided to stick with the most functional windows manager (for the moment, in my view), "MATE", XFCE is also very good but has limited functionality.
The MATE "Caja" file manager (a port of Nautilus), is superb in functionality and integrate dual pane feature among others.
Razor-qt for Fedora is very promising: clean, neat, but it is still a work in progress, and a few useful features are not yet implemented. There documentation on how to develop a razor-qt application seems elusive.
KDE works, largely, but I admit not liking it: too bloated, and complicated.
I had the pleasant surprise to observe that the extended range wireless adapter Alfa AWU036NHR which did not work with F18, now works well with F19, the new kernel has better drivers!
"texlive" install (the Latex environment) still could use a meta-package for proper install, nothing new there..
After update, Fedora 19 (X64) is now at RC2 and works just as well as Fedora 18 did: probably the best "Linux distro" for software development on Linux. This is why upcoming RedHat RHLE7, based on F19 shall be be excellent. It may even include larger mouse pointers?
That's all folks.
Jeffersonian
32 • @ 30 Deepin Linux 12.12 (by Chanath on 2013-06-25 15:19:42 GMT from Sri Lanka)
I even installed Gnome-shell and Gnome-classic additionally in Deepin 12.12. In both environments I could call the Deepin shell. Its interesting to see how the Gnome-shell moves away and the Deepin shell come over in the Gnome session, whenever I want it. And, in the Gnome-classic environment, all actions of Deepin session is there in addition to the Gnome-classic session, hot corners etc. Right now, I am using the Gnome-session and either the Gnome-shell or the Deepin-shell, whichever convenient for the moment, and move from one shell to another with one click. Interestingly, the Deepin shell is much more efficient than the Gnome-shell. Kudos to Deepin developers!
I must've missed a lot by not downloading Deepin 12.06
33 • I stand corrected... (by Zybersun on 2013-06-25 17:05:49 GMT from United States)
I always admit when I am either wrong or missed something. With that, I missed something that was said early on in this issue. ROSA is a Russian distribution, of course. The Russian company bought assets from Mandriva and have the controlling interest in Mandriva. This now makes sense with why OpenMandriva is based on ROSA rather than Mandriva itself. I wonder if ROSA will survive or eventually be absorbed by OpenMandriva. I need to research this some more. Please correct me if I am wrong with any of this. I haven't followed Mandriva that much for a few years or so and I am playing catch up right now.
34 • @ #33 (by Pierre on 2013-06-25 18:19:42 GMT from Germany)
Expecially with Mandriva it's hard to understand the whole relations between all the forks if you had not kept up with the development.
Mageia is the free project that followed the Mandriva breakdown and is the new home of many former Mandriva developers.
Mandriva (as a company) itself got taken over by ROSA and therefore now is something like the 'true Mandriva' without much left of Mandriva except it's tools.
OpenMandriva now tries to take the 'true base' and form it into a more free and open project than it has been during the original Mandriva years and more than it's now under the ROSA flag.
So, hope I understood all the little details right, because I did follow the news, but have never been really interested in Mandriva itself. Might be that I forgot a few things or missed even more. So my short overview might be not fully correct. Nevertheless it maybe helped to see the big deal about it all little better now.
35 • @ 33 & 34 Rosa (by Chanath on 2013-06-25 22:59:11 GMT from Sri Lanka)
Rosa is a Russian company, and not a small one. It is a highly stable business entity. It had resources to take over the failing Mandriva and it is not going to fail as a business in Russia. Mageia was the first organisation to start the first Mandriva fork, then the some broke away and made OpenMandriva. The "true base" of Mandriva is with the Rosa company. Its excellent to have 3 organisations keeping Mandriva alive. I hope the 3 of them keep in friendly contact with each other for the Mandriva legacy.
36 • Mandriva+ (by Zybersun on 2013-06-25 23:28:02 GMT from United States)
I am glad to hear that Mandriva still lives on. It seems at one point they where making all the wrong choices and really killing the Mandrake spirit. While I am more into a few other distro's at this time. I will be watching this more closely and seeing how this turns out. Who knows. Maybe Mageia, OpenMandriva or Rosa will take over the number one spot here at Distrowatch. Thanks for all the info people shared about this. I have a much better understanding now, as I am sure others do to.
37 • @ 31 / bloat? (by MZ on 2013-06-26 05:23:24 GMT from United States)
What is 'bloated'? I think several recent versions of KDE have been lighter than the Ubuntu Unity desktop. I also understand that many distros turn off the extraneous bits of KDE by default. I'd also say that given how most new desktops & laptops have had at least 4GB of RAM for the past couple of years, KDE is actually somewhat light. This is especially true if you compare KDE to something like Windows Vista, which uses about 3 to 5 times the amount of RAM that KDE does on the same hardware in my experience. I'd also say that the only complications presented by KDE are as a result of how it gives you choices in the desktop configuration department. The best ways to use KDE are to either leave the defaults & not worry about it, or familiarize yourself with it to the point where it doesn't really seem complicated at all. Personally I think KDE is the best all around desktop for any semi-recent hardware, but other stuff can be good as well. I just don't really get the complaint of KDE being 'bloated', at least not when you compare it to similar modern desktops.
38 • Unity & other DEs (by Chanath on 2013-06-26 06:55:40 GMT from Sri Lanka)
I really wanted to like Unity, so kept on working with it last few weeks. I put it on max autohide, but kept on hitting the left side of the screen to get at the launcher. It was quite frustrating. I have tried Gnome shell too, which didn't make me work too much to get at the applications. I used the old Slingshot launcher, which was the best of all. Its icon resided on a panel/dock, which came up from hiding as soon as the cursor came nearby. Then came Rosa shell, which is quite nice, but works only with KDE Plasma. Finally found the Deepin shell in Deepin 12.12.
The competition was between the Old Slingshot and the Deepin shell. Both are equally helpful, with Deepin DE being bit quicker for my fingers. I installed Deepin shell in Ubuntu too, so Unity, Old Slingshot and Deepin shell was there to be used.
The loser is Unity. And, that's because of its launcher. If the Unity devs make that launcher appear from hiding as soon as the cursor goes near, it would be nice.
Earlier in Ubuntu 12.04, I got rid of that launcher, but left the dash, which came up on clicking on an icon residing on the panel, or even on the desktop. They took out Unity 2D and that ability vanished from 12.10 upwards.
39 • @38 Unity (by greg on 2013-06-26 08:50:44 GMT from Slovenia)
"If the Unity devs make that launcher appear from hiding as soon as the cursor goes near, it would be nice. "
Suppose you had to draw something (or edit) almost up to the edge of screen or close to the edge and then the launcher would keep popping out preventing you to do that. how is that a good solution?
furthermore i think a key on keyboard can also make the launcher appear.
40 • @38 - lauchers (by meanpt on 2013-06-26 10:15:45 GMT from Portugal)
If nice launchers is what you're after, give the KDE's HomeRun launcher a try.
41 • Unity Launcher (by LinuxMan on 2013-06-26 11:40:39 GMT from United States)
@38, The sensitivity can be adjusted for the launcher in Unity. Using applications like the Unity Tweak Tool along with Appearance in the system settings and other utilities available can give a person a lot of control over the Unity desktop. Most of my monitors are wide screen so I don't really have a problem now with the launcher being present at all times. In the past I've use things like the window dodge utility to make things easier for a standard monitor. It's all up to what a person wants to do.
42 • @ 41 39, 40 (by Chanath on 2013-06-26 12:26:56 GMT from Sri Lanka)
I am after nice and easy working menu. Earlier, the best was the GnoMenu, where everything was inside the same window. Later came Dash etc, fullscreen and all. Not everyone useas widescreen monitors, most of us use laptops and netbooks, so we want to use all the area we can get. I said I put the sensitivity to the max, but still has to knock on the left side all the time to get at the launcher. Just because Ubuntu wants a left bar for the mobiles, doesn't mean its that good on desktops. Its not the launcher that the main thing there, but the dash. I separated the Dash from the launcher in Ubuntu 12.04 and got rid of the launcher. The dash became connected to an icon, either on the panel/dock or on the desktop.
The most important part of Ubuntu's Unity is the Dash, not the launcher. The Dash is the menu. I want the Dash, but not the launcher. Now, that Deepin menu shell is there, and also the old Slingshot, I really don't need the Unity's Dash, or try to separate the Dash from the launcher. There is also the new Singshot launcher from eOS.Mean
Meanpt, KDE has good launchers, even the standard Kickoff is very good. Getting at the apps an dfiles is the most important thing, and the Kickoff, Lancelot menus give full service to the user. The menu & the panel/dock is very important for desktops/laptops/netbooks.
43 • Categorizing distros & users into markets (by gregzeng on 2013-06-28 01:38:26 GMT from Australia)
@39 • @38 Unity ... where @38b is a distro-taster, rather than an operating system user IMHO.
Common theme so far: user's not declaring their user types. The bloated-KDE comment came from a self-labelled "software developer" (@31), who also thought that XFCE was not functional enough (?). He obviously has not tried Compiz, Cairo, Docky, AWN, etc ... with XFCE, to get more desired functionality.
XFCE, LXDE & Enlightenment seem favored by light Linux desktop systems, avoiding eye-candy.
The Gnome-refugees (Unity, Mate, Cinnamon) are in the midst of incompatible, confusing and irreversible changes, with no clear future ahead of them, including which coding bases to use. These refugees seem to need Compiz and other third party enhancements, to try to reach the functionality of KDE. KDE offers mixed popularity: love it or hate it. My opinion is they all need to go further to reach the functions we already need and have with the planet's favored desktop still, Windows, with quick, easy Configuration-migration, configuration-restore-backup.
E17 seems neglected in the desktop environments mentioned so far, because it's marketing department is unaware of some user-classifications (children, disabled-users, teenagers, parents, pet-lovers).
When Linux ever acquires a marketing department, it might try to categorize distros, users, administrators, columnists, politicians, etc ... into clear market sectors - where an organization or person clearly owes loyalty to mainly one sector, at the low regard of other sectors.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_1304_desktop1&num=1
Ubuntu 13.04 Desktop Gaming Performance Comparison
"The slowest desktops with the Ivy Bridge graphics on Linux was KDE Plasma while the default Unity desktop was also receded compared to the other desktop alternatives." (E17 neglected).
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTM5MzY
8-Way Desktop Comparison On Ubuntu 13.10
(E17 neglected).
A remarkable comment by Phoronix in the above url's is the clear labelling of "Ubuntu Desktop", since the main "Ubuntu" product is no longer the desktop.
44 • @ 43 • Categorizing distros & users into markets - gregzeng (by Chanath on 2013-06-28 02:25:12 GMT from Sri Lanka)
Distro taster? Hmmm..that's nice. That tasting comes with operating system using too. I like new DEs and shells, and menus. I really don't mind being a distro taster. I experiment with them. I am mainly a Ubuntu user, and I usually have few menus working for me. Like I said before, I am sorry that I didn't download Deepin 12.06. I'd have enjoyed it!
KDE is nice, but its sort of childish, meaning the looks, but KDE has everything in it. You don't really have to look for Compiz etc. Compiz is 3rd party? Well, everything is 3rd party. Ubuntu needs Compiz to keep Unity alive.
I try all DEs/WMs. I don't like E17--personal choice, okay? I don't mind XFCE, but if I need something to remind me Win95 days, I'd choose LXDE to XFCE, even the Rox DE. The best panel is still the Tint2. Everything is tried. I have my own tweaked AWN dock too.
If you are using Ubuntu 12.10 and above, you'd notice that Unity 2D is not available. But, if you look in the software sources, you'd find few "dummy packages" of Unity 2D in them. As soon as you dist-upgrade your Ubuntu 12.04, you lose Unity 2D. Ask yourself, why Ubuntu is keeping these "dummy packages" in their repos, and you'd find the answer. If they take those dummy packges out, I'd be very happy. But, they won't do that!
45 • @43 hmmm (by greg on 2013-06-28 07:32:37 GMT from Slovenia)
"Ubuntu 13.04 Desktop Gaming Performance Comparison
"The slowest desktops with the Ivy Bridge graphics on Linux was KDE Plasma while the default Unity desktop was also receded compared to the other desktop alternatives." (E17 neglected)."
tests were done in a lousy way.
1. it is not explained wheather the game was in windowed mode or full screen.
2. it doesn't say which desktop effects were turned on and which were off.
3. why were desktop effects turned on. we know that for exmaple to get good performance in KDE you set it to turn off desktop effects when playing full screen games. makes sense to me.
makes sense that compositing desktops with effects on are slower by default which is why one should turn off effect when playing games.
also strangley some games show all desktops have same rate and well since mostly old games were tested (all before i7 was made) it doesn't relaly tell much. they should make some more tests with 2011 and 2012 games. but those are hard to find in Linux ;-)
46 • @43 (by jadecat09 on 2013-06-28 08:26:47 GMT from United Kingdom)
It is well known that anything written on phoronix.com should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Have a great weekend.
47 • Gaming Performance (by LinuxMan on 2013-06-28 13:09:44 GMT from United States)
Well it seems that the one's who did the test really didn't know how to do a comparative study. There's too many unanswered questions.
48 • @6 32 bit Architecture (by Polymorph on 2013-07-01 03:33:44 GMT from Australia)
There's always Puppy Linux - with a bit of professional spit n polish (mostly with the installer) it could become the "Ubuntu" for Win refugees who's old gear doesn't cut it anymore...
btw: Meaning of "Ubuntu" - back when Ubuntu made Linux accessible to people, and the distro of choice, for new entry users.
Number of Comments: 48
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