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1 • Observations on today's DWW (by Sondar on 2013-10-28 10:01:39 GMT from United Kingdom)
Another helpful review from PC-BSD, thank you, Jesse. Used to be a fan. Excessive bloat, complexity increases, lack of liveCD, 64bit only as well as increasing 'issues' killed my interest. K.I.S.S. Notwithstanding, such a minority sport as BSD still places more obstacles between operators and phishers/scammers!
The big issue in upgrading (Jesse again) is swapping over to 64 from 32bit. Less than intuitive, less than quick and easy. Anyone written an automated script? Probably not. If accompanied by updating hardware, swapping from IDE to SATA adds to headaches.
Tried Makulu - very nice if somewhat bloated. Show-stopper for Brits is Chromium-FlashPlayer combo; difficult to 'switch-on' FP or upgrade it in order to use BBC iPlayer. Will the Beeb finally dump Adobe and use HTML5 before Jacque either fixes Chromium or offers another FP-friendly browser? Or a DW contributor offers constructive suggestions...
2 • What does "PC" mean in PC-BSD? (by CAI ENG on 2013-10-28 10:10:11 GMT from United States)
By my count, this review of PC-BSD, uses the word "administrator" 6 times, and the word "server" 5 times.
Why?
"This release did have its problems, but PC-BSD remains, in my opinion, the best desktop solution in the BSD community."
Well, I write only my own opinion, not attempting to imagine how anyone else feels about this review, but, "jails" are not something I find attractive as a feature of a DESKTOP operating system.
When one considers how much of this review is devoted to describing "administrative" functions, for example, the "ability" to save the entire operating system, easily, I wonder whether my own use of a desktop computer is aberrant.
If (when) I wish to replace my existing desktop os, I download the newest version (I prefer Crunchbang, and Lubuntu), I don't require, or desire, wasting space on a hard drive, saving the most recent version of the OS, that worked. That's a tool required by an ADMINISTRATOR, not the user of a desktop computer, or tablet, or phablet.
Your review simply highlights how far removed from the reality of 2013, UNIX appears, to me. I used UNIX, in the 70's. I can't imagine wanting to use it today. The entire thrust of the OS is MULTIUSER, in a refrigerated room, with security access required, not single user on a desktop, in their own home, or riding on an airplane. I haven't downloaded the newest version, but previous versions of PC-BSD insisted, during installation, that the user name and password conform to some 1960's era notion of a proper login, for a multiuser system. I failed to observe, in your review, any mention of that aspect of the installation process. I don't use any OS that demands my conformance to someone else's notion of a "proper" login id or password.
On my computer, I decide, not Bell Labs from 1968, how many characters to employ in login and password.
CAI ENG
3 • SolusOS (by uz64 on 2013-10-28 11:39:16 GMT from United States)
Such a promising distro, sucks to see it go.
4 • SolusOS closes shop (by raksi on 2013-10-28 11:51:57 GMT from Hungary)
This story is a good example for why I do not use distros with small momentum anymore.
5 • SolusOS was great (by Carlos Felipe on 2013-10-28 12:31:03 GMT from Brazil)
but when they start a distro from scratch, I thought: will be a failure, is a lot of work for just one man. Crazy decision.
6 • About zenwalk and the closure of SolusOS (by Jeferson Vasquez on 2013-10-28 12:52:48 GMT from Brazil)
If the people of zenwalk choses the xfce desktop manager(light weight indeed) and review their marketing concepts it will indeed revive the distro and its a shame that the SolusOS is discontinued. It was on the road of becoming a great distro ´cause of their various alphas they were releasing. The leader project should do as the same as the people of OPENSuSE were doing. Put a hack-a-ton contest to test out the reliability of the distro.
7 • SolusOS (by Archdevil on 2013-10-28 12:53:20 GMT from Netherlands)
I read the news last weekend: SolusOS has stopped. I loved the 1.x version, but I found that it took too long to get the 2.x version up-and-running. Ofcourse one of the reasons was the switch to a built from scratch distro. This meant a reboot of the 2.x series, leading to 9 alpha's. Too bad Ikey did not find the time to get this distro back on the road. While running Sabayon atm, after using PCLinuxOS for a few years, I was looking forward to using SolusOS soon. But that will never happen.
Thanks for trying, Ikey!
8 • SolusOS (by kc1di on 2013-10-28 13:15:46 GMT from United States)
I too had use SolusOS for a while. and sorry to see it go.
For those who liked it you may want to take a look at Point Linux. it's based on Debian stable also.
you can find it here :
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=point
9 • PC-BSD (by Dave Postles on 2013-10-28 13:21:12 GMT from United Kingdom)
I'd use it, but it's always such a pain mounting a usb memory stick. I've installed PC-BSD on numerous occasions to try it, but in the end just abandoned it for that reason.
10 • Re #2, "Desktop" usage (by Pearson on 2013-10-28 13:24:18 GMT from United States)
Well, for casual home use, your workflow is likely typical and appropriate for most people. For professional desktop usage, however, jails and backups can be very important. Recall that, in a non-small business environment, "administrators" are often called upon to resolve desktop issues. When an OS update is pushed out to 100 desktops, and then major problems are found[1], it's a great time saver to just roll them all back to the earlier OS.
1: let's not get into "it should've been tested better". Perhaps a the major problem was outside of the administrator's control (new direction from management, compatibility with newly required software, new security vulnerability, etc.). The point is that this *does* happen.
11 • Re #10, #1: a short rephrasing (by Pearson on 2013-10-28 14:29:36 GMT from United States)
I think I could summarize/rephrase my comment #10 with "Not all Desktop computers are home computers. Some are in a business or other mission-critical environment, where updates/changes must me made more carefully and security (from disaster/mistakes and from intrusion/malware) is very important."
12 • pcbsd (by greg on 2013-10-28 14:46:38 GMT from Slovenia)
Point is they have some great features, but critical bugs and also hardware support is the issue. it wouldn't be bad to see some of these neat features incorporated in linux. especially their PBI.
13 • #10-11 What does the "P" designate? hint, not Pearson (by CAIENG on 2013-10-28 15:03:58 GMT from United States)
the "P" denotes "PERSONAL", not enterprise. You are describing the parent of Pc-bsd, i.e. FreeBSD.
The rationale for creating a separate distro, was precisely to acknowledge that not everyone is still living in 1973, when 100 users shared a DEC-10, and thought they were livin high!
The "P" means, PERSONAL, not 100 users. Try again.
14 • upgrading Ubuntu 12.04 to 13.10 (by octathlon on 2013-10-28 15:04:22 GMT from United States)
I normally go from LTS to LTS, but even though 13.10 is only good for 9 months, I did this upgrade for a few reasons:
1) I'm using Cinnamon via the PPA and it went to 2.0, worked OK on 12.04 but some things weren't quite right.
2) Since the next release will be an LTS and I know I'll be upgrading again within the 9 months anyway, why wait.
3) I heard Unity had improved a lot since 12.04 and wanted to try it (I'll spare you my review of that).
4) After the upgrade (clean install) I now have kernel 3.11 instead of 3.2, boots and runs faster, Cinnamon 2.0.2 running nicely, etc. so it was a good decision.
15 • PC-BSD & SolusOS & Makulu Linux (by Sam on 2013-10-28 15:09:33 GMT from United States)
Is it me, or looking at the UI, which of these distros was competing to out-Windows-95 Micro$oft Windows 95?
Every time I've tried PC-BSD it reminds me of the functionality and buginess of Linux distros from roughly 5 years before whatever year it was I was trying PC-BSD. Sure it installed a lot friendlier than FreeBSD, but the lengths to which I had to go to get it usable on my old whitebox desktop PC workhorse just wasn't worth it when even Fedora would be far more usable as a desktop distro in far shorter time. While I'm sure BSD works great for a server, I'm at a loss to explain why anyone would waste their time and talent into trying to turn it into a desktop OS. Want a good BSD on the desktop, try OsX...
SolusOS folding? After turning their Debian derivative into a stand-alone-OS with only one guy routinely committed to development? A guy with a full-time job and probably a life outside a computer screen? I'd never seen that coming.
Makulu Linux. Seriously? If this was some poor kid in Africa's first effort at development to help his village become economically self-sufficient, congrats to him/her. If this is a serious contender for a global Linux distro, I'm afraid the old GeoWorks Suite (yeah, I'm going back THAT far) called and want their UI theme back.
16 • @14 (by jaws222 on 2013-10-28 15:10:04 GMT from United States)
That's always good to hear. I also go LTS to LTS. I'm checking out 13.10 now in Virtualbox (Xubuntu) and it seems okay, but I prefer 12.04.
17 • @12 (by mandog on 2013-10-28 15:16:25 GMT from Peru)
So you would like to see a applications like Kdenlive installing 637.3 MB or your system? firefox 201.13 MB?, Libreoffice 533.39 MB?. Because that is what you will get with bundled packages. That gives you windows type bloat does it not
PCBSD recommends a 250gb hardrive should be enough for most people.
18 • @17, "Personal" Computer BSD (by Pearson on 2013-10-28 15:48:54 GMT from United States)
If the Unix paradigm doesn't fit how you use a computer, then it may not be the right tool for you. I'm not trying to convince you otherwise; I'm merely pointing out that the paradigm still applies to *some* today.
That being said..
I looked at the PC-BSD About page[1], and you're definition *is* more correct:
>>
PC-BSD aims to make the FreeBSD experience easy and achievable for the average "casual" computer user
<<
I'll soften my response by saying that the multi-user and stability features can still be useful for the causal users. Imagine that a student wants to update the OS, but has a paper due in a few days. The roll back feature lets him update with less fear of risking his paper. Or, imagine a family with several kids. Supporting multiple users (and jails, I think -- I'm not a BSD user, so I may be wrong) allows the kids to use the computer with lessened risk; supporting multiple users simultaneously also supports this.
I don't desire an argument, so this will be the last I say on this.
[1] http://www.pcbsd.org/en/about/
19 • @15 re: Makulu (by octathlon on 2013-10-28 16:06:55 GMT from United States)
From the screenshot, that looks like XFCE with the Whisker menu, both of which have been growing in popularity lately, and for good reasons.
20 • @CAIENG: 'The "P" means, PERSONAL, not 100 users.' (by joncr on 2013-10-28 17:07:07 GMT from United States)
It's of no consequence what the "P" means.
Organizations who maintain and support multiple users on multiple desktops on a single network have different needs than a singleton desktop user. While you may find it perfectly fine to burn an image and completely reinstall to move to a new OS version, a business paying to support hundreds of desktops doesn't want to pay people to run around the building doing manual installs on each machine. Nor do they want to incur the employee downtime if and when one of those installs go wrong. They want to push out the update overnight when no one is working.
So, the features in FreeBSD, which PC-BSD leverages or builds on, make sense in that environment. If someone wants to use PC-BSD on a singleton desktop, they are free to ignore those features.
21 • PC-BSD, SolusOS and openSUSE (by Pierre on 2013-10-28 17:12:14 GMT from Germany)
Nice to see good progress at the BSD front.
Nevertheless BSD is still much behind Linux based OS's when it comes to hardware-compatibility and usability.
But if multimedia is not such a big topic and if you have the right hardware for FreeBSD/PC-BSD both are quite good choices for a workstation.
I like PKG-NG a lot. For a long-time Linux user who got used to comparable package management tools over the years it's nice to have such on BSD, too
And with Btrfs still not in stable state ZFS gains a lot of momentum here, especially with user-friendly GUI-Tools for managing snapshots.
openSUSE already has such a GUI-Tool called snapper for managing snapshots of Btrfs volumes. Additionally updates trigger an automatic snapshot of the system, if the system's drive is formated with Btrfs.
I am using Btrfs on my machines since 12.1 and have not experienced any problems except from some performance issues in 12.1 and 12.2 which were gone with 12.3 and therefore hopefully will not occur in 13.1 either.
Additionally I am reading more and more very good early (p)reviews about the openSUSE 13.1 release candidates. So hopefully this is another rock solid release since the amazing 12.1 release.
SolusOS's shut down is very sad. I was looking forward to test-drive version 2 as soon as it gets released. Now that will never happen.
Best wishes to Ikey. Hope his visions find their future in some other projects. Maybe they should not have split off Debian and stayed with a strong base instead of doing all the work on their own.
But thanks for trying from me, too, Ikey!
Greetings from Germany!
22 • PC-BSD 9.2 (by Jon Kaplowitz on 2013-10-28 18:25:21 GMT from United States)
I have to agree with the other posters. PC-BSD is difficult to install. I got it to install without hanging on the 8th try. Then, the update "feature" was buggy. I could not mount an ext4 filesystem from a USB stick drive, although it did recognize a FAT32 partition on a flash stick.
It also requires to much drive space and bandwidth compared to standared Linux distros.
I gave up playing with it after 4 days of trying to make if "just work."
Conclusion:
PC-BSD developers are living in 1995. This is NOT a good release even for experienced Unix users.
PC-BSD 9.2: Just AWFUL.
23 • RE: What does "PC" mean in PC-BSD? (by CAI ENG on 2013-10-28 10:10:11 GMT from U (by M. Edward (Ed) Borasky on 2013-10-28 18:58:14 GMT from United States)
I'm the exact opposite of you - I want a scientific workstation. I was forced to use Windows PCs at work to do scientific computing, and it wasn't until Windows 2000 Professional that the core OS was solid enough to support that. Windows 3.1 with 32-bit hacks, Windows 95, 98, 98SE and ME were DOS with a shim tacked on - useless.
So I dual-boot Windows and Linux and might well add PC BSD to the mix.
24 • Call for a unified Linux Distro package manager. (by Jeffersonian on 2013-10-28 19:02:19 GMT from United States)
Hello:
if the Kernel is pretty much the same (or can be!) for all Linux Distros, there is an insane numbers of packages proliferation!
It would be time, for a benevolent Linux developer to spend time on the application, user or kernel level, rather than developing an almost endless number of packages. (In doubt, have a peek a "texstudio.sourceforge.net"... so many, too many packages required !
The Perl script "Checkinstall" was a brave attempt, but does not really address the issue.
Having a positive bias for RPM packages (the most elaborate and mature in my view), I would suggest for each distro to give the choice of the package manager(s) at install time.
I do not see the need for more than one, but it could be possible...
Ideally the RPM (or Debian etc...) package manager used, would keep the database updated.... but please "keep it simple".
I would suggest too the top Linux distros to be leaders, and all adopt the same package manager. Why not after all !
"Call for a unified Linux Distro package manager." You hear Mageia, Mint, Redhat, Ubuntu people ?
And Linus, could you be there again a benevolent dictator, with any finger(s) you deem useful to use, we are with you !
Please post useful comments if you have one.
Jeffersonian.
25 • @23 DOS??? (by Ulf on 2013-10-28 19:32:13 GMT from Netherlands)
@23,
Really you know what you are talking about then?
All and i mean All even 7 and 8 windows versions are DOS, still resident in hi memory.
(if you know something about oss`es.
UNIX, BSD, and all of its derivatives (linux) , are more suitable fore scientific computing.
In short all windows versions are; DOS with a shim tacked on - useless.
Greetings from a happy opensuse user, who is as i might add, running it as a server/desktop environment at the same time on a real old machine.
(Dont need a heavy multicore full of ram machine for that if you know a little about oss`es and tweaking)
26 • Qu 22 (by dbrion on 2013-10-28 19:41:51 GMT from France)
" I could not mount an ext4 filesystem from a USB stick drive, although it did recognize a FAT32 partition on a flash stick."
Can Windows read an ext3/4 flash drive? (in 2013)
Can GNUlinux mount/read a ZFS flash drive ?
Which distributions can mount/read a Btrfs flash drive?
27 • @24 unified package manager won't work (by DavidEF on 2013-10-28 20:04:19 GMT from United States)
Different distros have different reasons for being, different goals, and different end users. Therefore, the package selections will be different. There will always be someone using the latest greatest version of every known package, and always someone using the older, more stable, with an endless rainbow of mixed modes in between. There will always be differences in opinion about how packages should be, um, packaged, as well. And of course, there are lots of attempts at creating the next new, awesome, best-in-the-world thing. People say we're fractured. Maybe it's true. But, then, maybe we LIKE it that way! After all, it really is all about choice! Let's not become Microsoft, okay?
28 • @26 ZFS flash drive? Btrfs flash drive? (by DavidEF on 2013-10-28 20:08:17 GMT from United States)
Do you also put Corvette engines on a moped?
29 • Makulu (by Hopper on 2013-10-28 20:42:04 GMT from United States)
I currently have it installed. It is really very, very, smooth, and fast. It could be a keeper. I'll know after a couple of weeks. It is XFCE with the Whisker menu (@19). Don't knock it without trying it. It's well worth the download.
30 • unified package management (by Lutz on 2013-10-28 20:45:08 GMT from Germany)
before packagemanagement comes compiling from the sources.
often upstream gives different options to compile your flavour of the program.
every user knows about that.
everybody wants or needs different things.
that is the way the sources function.
therefore: no unification
31 • There can be only one? (by :wq on 2013-10-28 21:34:14 GMT from United States)
This is not in response to any preceding comment; it is just an observation. Many of the 'quit trying'/'why bother?' criticisms of *BSDs that are sometimes voiced by the Linux community are the same 'quit trying'/'why bother?' criticisms GNU/Linux itself had to face (and often still faces) from other communities (e.g. smaller PC market share, existence of alternatives, issues with hardware support and the user experience, etc). I guess that's human nature, but I think it's an undesirable sentiment. I'll grant that the BSD family is not at all new, and that as an operating system, GNU/Linux is more established, both in terms of mind share and development manpower, but I don't think that therefore 1) other operating systems, be it BSD or otherwise, have nothing of value to offer the world, or that 2) these operating systems should be pigeonholed (ex. '__ is only suitable for servers' or '__ is a hobbyist OS' – gee, where have I heard the likes of these before?) and frowned upon as they seek to evolve within the constraints of the vision and manpower of their respective communities.
32 • MakuluLinux (by Jacque Raymer on 2013-10-28 22:08:26 GMT from South Africa)
@1 • Observations on today's DWW (by Sondar on 2013-10-28 10:01:39 GMT from United Kingdom)
Flashplayer and Chrome is fixed in Makulu 4.1 which is live already, Also included in 4.1 is a fully working Minitube youtube browser as a bonus. 4.2 should be live tomorrow sometime which brings bunch of new fixes, it will all be in the release notes on sourceforge.
15 • PC-BSD & SolusOS & Makulu Linux (by Sam on 2013-10-28 15:09:33 GMT from United States)
Every person has his preference, If makulu isnt for you then use whatever suits your needs, I welcome feedback to improve wherever i can, I also want to point out this is version 4, not version 1.
@19 • @15 re: Makulu (by octathlon on 2013-10-28 16:06:55 GMT from United States)
Yes, it is XFCE with whisker menu, and yes, its definitely the future of XFCE and a long overdue to a menu overhaul.
33 • OpenSuse heading south? (by Bob on 2013-10-28 22:10:13 GMT from Austria)
OpenSuse's next release (13.1) is getting closer. For the first time in years it looks that they've done something right. The release candidate works surprisingly well and their KDE version is probably one of the best out there.
Nevertheless OpenSuse's Distrowatch ranking keeps slowly drifting downwards. Still trying to guess the reason for that ...
34 • @33 (by jaws222 on 2013-10-28 22:13:46 GMT from United States)
Actually, 12.1 - 12.3 were done right imo. the 11 series was a disaster.
35 • There are only 10 kinds of people (by Oko on 2013-10-28 22:52:48 GMT from United States)
the one who do understand binary numbers and the one who don't! That being said there also only 10 kinds of file systems users. The one who need ZFS and the one who don't. The one who do need ZFS do understand that ZFS requires 64-bit operating system, full stop. The one who don't need can stop reading right here and get back to your 32-bit OSs :)
I will concede that this has been one of better and more useful reviews I have read on DWW over the past couple of years. While I tent to use OpenBSD for almost anything these days ZFS seems to be one two most interesting file systems for large data storage (second being Hammer of DragonFly). The fact that PC-BSD makes ZFS and Jails accessible to a casual home user is commendable.
I would like to see the review of DragonFly after the next release. Hopefully it will be better than the last one which I stop reading after I learned that reviewer has opted for UFS file system.
36 • openSuse's ranking. (by LinuxMan on 2013-10-28 23:15:23 GMT from United States)
@33,
What you have to remember is that the Distrowatch ranking does not indicate quality or user base. It does sometimes give us a slight indication of popularity. I've known people who have switched to a Linux system but have never gone to the Distrowatch site. Still the page hit rankings are fun to look at and it sometimes give us something to talk about. The best thing to do is to take all the rankings you see on the internet with a grain of salt. There are some great distros way down in the rankings so we shouldn't use that as an indicator not to try a distro. It's all fun by the way. All the different DM's, package managers, and some people even like Gnome3. (except Jim Lynch) :-)
37 • openSUSE (by Reuben on 2013-10-29 00:11:02 GMT from United States)
I have to concur that openSUSE is a great distro. And the rankings here are a lot like the billboard music charts in that they mean very little. There are dozens or hundreds of excellent distros and SuSE is only one of them.
38 • @24, and version upgrades (by Charles on 2013-10-29 00:52:52 GMT from Mexico)
¿ I'd like to know is what are the benefits of upgrading my operating system?
The only benefit that justifies, is SECURITY. Explanation:
There are not virus, there is very little malware, but ... the weakness in any system (GNU / Linux included), are attacks (hackers, crackers, MIMs, backdoors, etc.).
Windows is the weakest of all, partly because of their limited and delayed updates, and for his few major version upgrades.
Instead, on GNU / Linux, the defense is higher, among others, thanks to the constant updates and a variety of distributions.
For a hacker / cracker, is more attractive break a system with a single version in three years (Windows), to deal with a system with hundreds of versions (distributions), and six major upgrades in three years (example: Ubuntu).
@24
"if the Kernel is pretty much the same (or can be!) for all Linux Distros, there is an insane numbers of packages proliferation!
"Call for a unified Linux Distro package manager." You hear Mageia, Mint, Redhat, Ubuntu people ?"
No, In these days of hacks, think of safety, the larger the target, the lower the effectiveness of the attack.
39 • Ultimate edition 3.6, Solus OS (by Chanath on 2013-10-29 04:41:03 GMT from Sri Lanka)
Once, I liked Theeman's Ultimate Edition, but later I found it so bloated up. Sure I found OZUnity Ubuntu respins, which were not that bloated, and quick in response. Now, we have 3.6, which comes from Ubuntu 12.10. I don't know, whether 12.10 is supported anymore. Anyway, if you know a bit about Ubuntu distros, it is always easy to have your own distro with what you want, and even throw away some of Ubuntu's bloat. So, I won't download it. If Theeman would make his respin from Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, maybe, just maybe I'd look into it.
Solus OS should've been with Debian, rather than trying to get an already dead system in to develop a full data repository. Well, he didn't listen to anyone, and there goes Solus OS. One thing is to have a dream, but you'd have to inject that dream into others, and that can't be done, if you are flogging a dead horse. Anyway a person has to have a job and a place to live. I wish Ikey all the best in his future endeavors. I still have his Debian based Solus OS 2 beta working versions, made to work with the old Slingshot launcher. I would upgrade it from the Debian repos, and keep it alive in one of the partitions.
Thank you, Ikey and wish you all the best!
40 • Makulu (by Hopper on 2013-10-29 05:09:29 GMT from United States)
@32 - Actually, now that I think about it...XFCE with the Whisker menu is the XFCE I've been waiting for. I never liked the XFCE menu. I am an XFCE fan and this is exactly what it needs.
41 • Voyager 13.10 (by Chanath on 2013-10-29 05:16:38 GMT from Sri Lanka)
Voyager is one of the nicest XFCE distros I've seen up to date. The young French developer uses the old Slingshot as the menu, and in this new release there is no menu, only the Slingshot. Workwise, this is the best solution, easy and pretty.
By the time Ubuntu 14.04 comes, lot of people would forget Elementary OS, with its buggy, unproved apps. Voyager, for example takes two of the aps, Plank and Slingshot. Pear OS does the same thing, and both of these OSs are much more popular than the eOS. Some people might disagree, but do you see many comments on the eOS web site?
The only problem with Voyager is that its website is in French, but its easy to get translated, and it gives a complete how-to in it.
42 • SolusOS (by Jeremy Justus on 2013-10-29 06:12:01 GMT from United States)
SolusOS closing to me is a consequence of a larger problem in the Linux community. I understand that variety and choices are good, but the sheer fragmentation among Linux distributions is almost obscene. We don't need 40 Debian-stabled based distributions, 87 Ubuntu-derivatives, and 11 Sid variants, as is currently the case. In 90% of the distributions listed on this site there's a significant overlap in terms of design and goals with at least half a dozen other distributions.
We would see far, far more progress if instead of everybody trying to roll their own special snowflake, they instead combined their efforts with currently existing projects.
43 • @14 - 12.04 LTS Upgrading (by Woodstock69 on 2013-10-29 07:58:34 GMT from Papua New Guinea)
I too run (Kubuntu) 12.04 LTS, and a significant number of PPA's, though not too exotic, to keep the apps up to date. No Unity issues, no Dash issues. Just easy computing. KDE updates keep coming through, making KDE better and better.
Kernel 3.11.5 (Saucy) from mainline PPA runs fine. Sure I have some issues from time to time with the Catalyst drivers, but I can always fall back to the Radeon driver, which works well. I persist with the Catalyst drivers only for my own twisted entertainment and curiosity.
So, after Jesse's commentary, there really isn't any reason to move to 13.10. I'll happily wait until the next LTS (14.04?) and even then, I still have another 3 years of 12.04 LTS updates available.
All good..... For now......
44 • PC-BSD (by blahblablah@yopmail.com on 2013-10-29 09:05:24 GMT from United States)
I tried installing PC-BSD on my ageing amd64. Would always fail installing. Always a problem with grub. If you went to install with grub it would fail, and if you declined installing with grub it would fail. Needless to say it does not work for me. I was able to install Freebsd though. However, does not work with the ati card I have. Would only do vesa. KMS is the problem but have not been able to get that going as you can in linux. I installed freebsd on an ancient laptop (dell cpx latitude). It works on this, but you have to get through loops just to get flash to work. You have to install some linux port. Once this is done the fan control (which is the only reason I installed freebsd on the dell) stopped working. So I can either have no flash support in the browser or have no fan control. I also agree with what @15 said above about going back in time to a distro that was less functional and polished and has issues with various things.
45 • Fragmentation (by Fossilizing Dinosaur on 2013-10-29 09:47:26 GMT from United States)
Divided we assert our independence - and often fall, one by one. The global economy is tightening these days.
A difference study might be illuminating, but merging communities is like herding cats, or rival ant colonies.
Geeks are rarely long on community-building social skills, likewise proprietary-bent organizations.
Many spins differ most by window-manager/desktop-environment, which should be a simple choice from several options, but where's the API to enable such choices?
Few provide an installation/maintenance checklist; instead of keeping concessions and compromises to a tightly-controlled minimum, package deal.
Many start with a similar mix/library of drivers & apps; the global library is huge.
Without either packaging standards or better package managers, who can maintain it all? Who'd want to?
Other Musings
How often is the latest kernel an improvement for hardware you already have?
How does the artificial "intelligence" of automated translation stack up against genuine wisdom?
46 • Elementary OS (by Wolf on 2013-10-29 10:59:00 GMT from Germany)
@41
Dear Chanath, I not unlike you distrohop quite a bit. There is fun in trying modern Software solutions to problems no one is actually having. So I stumbled over Elementary OS with the usual :"Oh no not another Ubuntu respin, I am tired."
But Alas this one really got me hooked 12.04 LTS as Base, polished looks, just the right amount of Eye Candy. Desktop Management at its best and not one crash that Ubuntu 12.04 so relentlessly threw at me. So please tell me what you meant by:
"By the time Ubuntu 14.04 comes, lot of people would forget Elementary OS, with its buggy, unproved apps. .... Some people might disagree, but do you see many comments on the eOS web site?"
To the last part, I admit not to much traffic on EOS Web Site. So popularity might become an issue, but please tell us about those buggy unproved Apps you are writing about.
I tried Voyager and Pear but you know french is kind of a deal breaker, cause I don't understand any!
Bye Wolf
47 • Makulu and Debian-Ubuntu-based distros (by netscarf on 2013-10-29 11:42:21 GMT from United States)
I think Debian-based distros are the future, and you will see less new ubuntu-based distros. The trend seems to be Ubuntu-based distros moving to debian as well... {Crunchbang, LMDE, Solydxk, etc}.
I'm not knocking Ubuntu, it's just going in a direction I'm not going. There seems to be a growing divide in the linux community. Ubuntu Gnome3 people, and the traditionalists.
As for Makulu, I've been looking for a Debian-based Xubuntu replacement for awhile. Makulu is really really nice. Smooth running, nice-looking, Great menu.. Think I'm gonna stick with this one.
48 • @47 (by jaws222 on 2013-10-29 14:46:56 GMT from United States)
Give SalineOS a try. It's a very good distro. Also, if you don't mind Arch try Manjaro. Manjaro also has a pretty sweet Openbox version too.
49 • @ #47 • Makulu and Debian-Ubuntu-based distros (by Pierre on 2013-10-29 15:18:45 GMT from Germany)
Well, at least we see lesser Ubuntu based respins than we saw in the past.
I am not picking at Ubuntu here either. But I dislike the way they're heading.
Debian is a nice and stable distro with a huge community behind it with people who really know what they are doing.
Crunchbang is one of my favorites at the moment when it comes to Debian based distros. It's clean and stable and the Openbox configuration is simply beautiful in my eyes.
But LMDE, SalineOS, SolydXK, Kwheezy, Snowlinux and Makulu are nice distros alltogether, too.
But nevertheless I still prefer openSUSE over all of them. As usual this is simply a question of taste, needs and preferences.
50 • PCBSD (by mandog on 2013-10-29 16:40:18 GMT from Peru)
I just upgraded to 9.2, I keep PCBSD on a 250gb partition to see how its evolving every release does close the gap a little, Criss moore does a good job, with what he has to work with. He is very aware that more software support like sound cards need to be addressed but that is not a priority, like flashdrive media player support,
The building of kernels for instance is now down to 2 commands after you edit the confige file so rebuilding the kernel to use my sound card is now easier, its not the solution but works.
Gnome 2 desktop to me is like a visit to the past but it is functional. LXDE is really good alternative, KDE is the weakest link and gives many problems for some reason that is echoed by beanpole, Xfce is stable but I have not used it on PCBSD so I cant comment,
Windows drives can be automounted,
Flash drives are very hit and miss at the moment but that will be sorted in the near future.
Boot times are slow compared to Linux but you should have any need to boot if you use any BSD distro as it should be used.
51 • Musix (by thom on 2013-10-29 17:44:26 GMT from Sweden)
Help needed. I just downloaded Musix 3 (rc) and can't get past the log-in screen. The Musix site is half-empty (or half-full, depending on your perspective :-) and the wiki-page leads nowhere. Is anybody able to help?
Oh yeah, and the video resolution at the log-in screen looks suspiciously like 600x800/256. I thought that died with the millenium bug. Anybody...?
peace
52 • Debian based distros. (by LinuxMan on 2013-10-29 18:02:52 GMT from United States)
"There seems to be a growing divide in the linux community. Ubuntu Gnome3 people, and the traditionalists."
@47, I do agree that there is a divide between certain groups of people. I don't believe it is as pronounced as you state tho. There will always be a divide. There was one between KDE 3 and KDE 4, Gnome 2 and Gnome 3, deb and rpm, Unity and Mate and the list goes on and on. Not all Debian respins do so well. For instance take LinuxMint Cinnamon main based on Ubuntu and LinuxMint Debian Edition. LMDE is in no way as polished or stable as the main edition of LinuxMInt. It could be the manpower or lack of resources. It's hard to say. Sometimes the transfer going from one base works and sometimes it just doesn't. One example is SolusOS. They went from Debian to independent and just couldn't keep up. The only thing wrong with Ubuntu respins is that they are easy to make. That's why you get such a bunch of them. Then again I believe that's what open source is all about. Doing whatever you want and getting things done, like work and fun.
53 • @42 Number of Debian/Ubuntu Based Distros (by Rev_Don on 2013-10-29 18:03:05 GMT from United States)
You are overlooking one significant aspect in this. Sure one could take any existing Debian/Ubuntu based distro and customize it to their liking fairly easily when it's installed to a hard drive. It's not quite so simple customize a LIVE CD/DVD. Yes there are tools to do so, but the amount of work required is significantly higher, plus you lose the ability to download one on the fly when needed. IMNSHO, that is where the strength of variety of distros comes into play. Some people might not see it that way, but it is a realistic factor that should be taken into consideration.
54 • RE 53 : It is possible to automagically create 14 respins a day (by dbrion on 2013-10-29 18:40:41 GMT from France)
Fedora builds automagically 14 kinds of respins every night http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/nightly-composes/
(with the latest software): one is for LXDE, two other (KDE and Science+KDE), ... for KDE, one for XFCE, one for robotics lovers, one for gaamers, one for electronics lovers (FCEL : many free tools, from the trivialest to the most sophisticated). They work as **installable** LIVE DVDs/CDs and I often found FCEL very useful, once installed.
OTOH, as they might change every night (xUBUs change less frequently) they are humbleenought to call them respins or nightly builds and not tell the entire world there are 14 new releases every night.
55 • PC-BSD (by Koroshiya Itchy on 2013-10-29 18:44:30 GMT from Belgium)
PC-BSD is a great alternative to Linux. I tried it out of Linux kernel regressions frustration and liked it a lot.
Of course, hardware support within the BSD family tends to be more limited as compared to Linux. However, PC-BSD has always worked like a charm in all my hardware. In certain cases, even devices that were giving troubles with Linux, worked perfectly (and out of the box) with PC-BSD. This includes a particular sound card and a graphics card that started to give troubles with Linux kernel versions newer than 2.6.32.
Advanced features such a ZFS and Jails will be a big plus for many and PC-BSD is easier to install and use than most Linux distros.
The big issues for me were:
1.- No CUDA support.
2.- Noticeably reduced desktop responsiveness (even the Xfce version pulls KDE dependencies aplenty).
3.- Reduced general performance.
56 • re.32 & Makulu & Jacque (by Sondar on 2013-10-29 18:55:57 GMT from United Kingdom)
Thank youi! Just the sort of support to build confidence. A CD version would be welcome, too.
57 • BSD (by Togo on 2013-10-29 20:15:52 GMT from United States)
I'm tired of hearing about BSD. Leave it on the server. It is not as good as Linux on the desktop and it doesn't seem like it ever will be. I want to like it, but it is what it is. Just one person's opinion.
58 • Lots of Respins (by LinuxMan on 2013-10-30 00:06:34 GMT from United States)
@54,
Ubuntu has a nightly build on their development version and I don't know about the builds of the derivatives. Nothing like what the Fedorproject has. That's really amazing. I do a lot of PLC and robotics programming on automation systems. Those builds sound really interesting. Thanks for the link.
59 • @58 (by :wq on 2013-10-30 00:49:04 GMT from United States)
I'm probably mentioning what is already known, but if by chance not, should you not want a nightly build, you can find the spin releases at http://spins.fedoraproject.org/.
60 • thanks (by trish on 2013-10-30 03:17:37 GMT from United States)
"roll their own special snowflake"
Thanks for the chuckle : )
61 • Re: #14 upgrading Ubuntu to 13.10 Cinnamon 2.0 warning (by octathlon on 2013-10-30 03:36:26 GMT from United States)
I just found out that installing Cinnamon 2.0 breaks Unity on 13.10 Saucy. Can fix by uninstalling Cinnamon. I will keep Cinnamon unless it causes some other problem, but if you were planning to use Unity after installing it you have been warned. :)
62 • PC-BSD's place in the world (by Jesse on 2013-10-30 13:12:03 GMT from Canada)
Some people have raised questions as to the role PC-BSD plays and whether its utilities suit typical desktop usage. I suppose it could be debated whether PC-BSD is really targeting consumer users at home, it does feel more like a friendly power-user desktop system than a device for the average user sitting at home.
Personally, I suspect PC-BSD's target audience is businesses, particularly business which use FreeBSD and FreeNAS in the server room. PC-BSD is sponsored by iXsystems, a company which sells hardware and BSD support. A product like PC-BSD lets iXsystems supply servers, storage and workstations while bundling each with an appropriate operating system. Basically, iXsystems can provide end-to-end hardware and software solutions for enterprises, covering most usage scenarios. In my opinion the fact PC-BSD can be used as a decent home desktop operating system is a bonus, probably not the primary intent.
63 • PC-BSD reviewed by Linux Format Magazine (by Koroshiya Itchy on 2013-10-30 14:01:04 GMT from Belgium)
It gets 9/10:
http://www.ixsystems.com/resources/ix/updates/pc-bsd-92-earns-rave-reviews-from-linux-format-magazine.html
64 • @ 46 eOS Wolf from Germany (by Chanath on 2013-10-30 14:29:50 GMT from Sri Lanka)
Hi Wolf,
Its not like the eOS guys tweaked Ubuntu 12.04, but changed all kinds of apps. For example, if the known devil Nautilus works well, there is no real need to change it by semi-working one. When David at Pear OS made some changes to Plank, eOS guys had to do something, even though they are somewhat arrogant, and think they had reinvented the wheel.
When, Clem at Mint was shown that his Cinnamon menu goes above the screen, when favorites are added, he took the call and corrected it, and that menu had become quite a nice one today.
If you take the old Slingshot and the new one of eOS Luna, which is much more comfortable to work with? If you are using a netbook, or 11", 13" screen laptop, would you want an unresponsive Wingpanel, which doesn't have any wings at all?
I took the Luna beta and took away that useless Wingpanel, and made the "new" Slingshot work without it. Showed the eOS guys, why that Wingpanel is not needed, just to hold one menu box. Even without the Wingpanel, the "new" Slingshot opened pointing at the top left corner.
Then threw away that Plank, and either installed the patched one of Pear, or installed the dear old Docky. The respin of Luna worked perfectly without practically all of the eOS apps. Then, I took the vanilla 12.04 and made myself a Luna without most of the eOS apps. I am not a geek, but I know how to work with the Terminal, and its a question of uninstalling some apps, blocking some repos, adding some apps.
When did the eOs guys come out with Luna? After the release of Raring? In a few months, 14.04 LTS would be released, but it would be very much different from 12.04 LTS. So, eOS would go the same way as Solus OS. Even, if the eOS guys would come out with a next distro 18-24 months after the release of 14.04, who is going to wait?
Not being a geek, I had made "Slingshot" working distros from Ubuntu 12.10, 13.04 and 13.10, and with 13.10, I started that from the 1st 13.10 cdimage.
The whole Elementary OS is 4 things; the Wingpanel, Plank, the new Slingshot and the Elementary icons & theme. But actually, if one can still use the Old Slinghshot, none of the above are needed.
By the way, Voyager's French website is not a problem, as you can always translated by Google. One can understand it. The distro itself can be installed in English, and after that you don't need any French language knowledge.
I don't exactly hop distros. I know now which ones to download and enjoy. I enjoy using Linux distros. I have one 500 GB laptop with so many partitions, so I would install them, and keep those I like for a long time. I can open my apps in all of the Linux distros, so I don't lose time. Even, if I lose few minutes, not a big deal, as I like the Linux distros and enjoy them. I'd always download Puppy, Calculate and Sabayon. OpenSuse had stopped being interesting. Mageia has something that makes me look into it. I won't be interested in Mint, while Ubuntu is there. I've lost interest in the Cinnamon menu. Oh, I shouldn't bore you with what I like or not.
I am awaiting Ubuntu 14.04, because it would bring something new that the other distros won't have. I have a feeling that Kubuntu 14.04 might come with Wayland, and Lubuntu would go the Qt way. By April 2014, would the other distros come out with something new, or would it still the same with new cosmetics?
65 • 24 Unified package manager. (by Willi-amp. on 2013-10-30 14:32:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
It was shown a couple of years ago that several peripherals suppliers said they would be happy to put drivers for Linux on their driver discs if only one was needed. And that, of course, is not the only benefit.
I think highly of Mageia, they have a great team doing things in the right way and I would be using their distro if it wasn't for their insane selection of URPMI. Their package manager does work reliably but it's not easy to use, because applications are scattered all over the place and when you list them under 'All', you get a 'Few', and the 'Few' never includes the one that you want. As it is I use PCLOS, similar in some ways, but light-years ahead when it comes to package management ease of use. Why can't Mageia see it?
66 • re. 1,32 & 56 (by Sondar on 2013-10-30 17:10:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
...but sadly v4.2 now gives Shockwave Flash unavailable. Already ticked .../plugins Adobe FlashPlayer 'always allowed'. Something else to do?
67 • Respin (by Wolf on 2013-10-30 20:14:38 GMT from Germany)
Dear Chanath as I cannot reach you via email I'll reply here very shortly!
Nautilus didn't need replacing but the eOS Filemanager is working fine!
Not sure about Slingshot never used it. Some few Software that I use often I
start from plank. The rest I'll comfortably find in the starter on top (Wingpanel??). No problem there as far as I see.
You mentioned corners. I find those very well done and easy to configure!
"Then threw away that Plank, and either installed the patched one of Pear, or installed the dear old Docky. The respin of Luna worked perfectly without practically all of the eOS apps. Then, I took the vanilla 12.04 and made myself a Luna without most of the eOS apps. I am not a geek, but I know how to work with the Terminal, and its a question of uninstalling some apps, blocking some repos, adding some apps."
Ok but they do it for me and you so why should I bother? I like their philosophy on how a desktop should work and look (e.g. no cluttering Icons) Again the handling of different Desktops is superb (e.g. reducing the open Desktops when the last Software on it was closed)
And the Systemmanagement though close to Ubuntu just a tiny bit better.
Not one crash report to Ubuntu where 12.04.3 crashed on a daily basis.
"When did the eOs guys come out with Luna? After the release of Raring? In a few months, 14.04 LTS would be released, but it would be very much different from 12.04 LTS. So, eOS would go the same way as Solus OS. Even, if the eOS guys would come out with a next distro 18-24 months after the release of 14.04, who is going to wait?"
There you are right, they are very late but on my old machine maybe it stays on till 17.04 5 Years you know it's based on LTS
"By the way, Voyager's French website is not a problem, as you can always translated by Google. One can understand it. The distro itself can be installed in English, and after that you don't need any French language knowledge."
No Google translation from French to German (my native language) is horrible pardon my french. I tried that but even my nonexisting french knowledge (2 holidays) allowed better translations than that. At least my german does make a little bit of sense whereas google .......
So all in all I think I'll take another look into voyager and pear (tried them 6 months ago wasn't too impressed) and then I tell you what bugs me about those 2. Even if my Life depended on it I don't recall what turned me away
Greetings from germany Wolf
PS I bet you no Wayland or Mir in 14.04 (should be LTS)
68 • To many Linux OS's? (by Used Solus on 2013-10-30 20:46:24 GMT from United States)
[Q]I understand that variety and choices are good, but the sheer fragmentation among Linux distributions is almost obscene. [Q/]
I used SolusOS. It was great. When I did a search I only found two OS's that fit my needs. I want a Debian stable with a traditional desktop. I do not want the bloat of KDE. That left me Solus and Point. I am now using Point. I will probably end up with Debian. I am not using Debian yet, as I am newer to Linux and am not sure from what I know I could configure Debian and add the Mate desktop. So of the only real choice that works for me right now, you want to take that away?
69 • @68 (by jaws222 on 2013-10-30 21:02:36 GMT from United States)
Give Crunchbang a shot. It's default DE is Openbox. Very clean and fast.
70 • MakuluLinux (by Jacque Raymer on 2013-10-30 23:14:06 GMT from South Africa)
66 • re. 1,32 & 56 (by Sondar on 2013-10-30 17:10:24 GMT from United Kingdom)
Are you talking about makululinux ? Flashplayer in 4.2 works, ive tested it MANY times over, i even made a video in youtube using 4.2 which you can view here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ogksyrlrf8w&feature=youtu.be
go to menu, system, synaptic package manager and Check if you have flasplugin-nonfree installed, that is the package i use for flash in chromium, maybe for some reason it got removed with another installation or update?
71 • Good distro for installing on Win 7 UEFI system? (by Anony Moss on 2013-10-31 05:45:45 GMT from India)
A quick question for you guys out there. I want to install a Linux distro on my Win 7 desktop machine without wiping my windows. I haven't installed Linux on a Win 7 machine before, so I'm seeking some advice here. This PC has an OEM Windows version and I don't have a Win 7 installation CD in case my Linux installation messes up the boot process.
The machine seems to have UEFI and I have enabled 'legacy boot devices' in the BIOS. Is there anything else I need to do?
**Which Linux distro has a reliable and 'safe' installer that has good chances of playing well with my existing OS installation?** I'll prefer a smaller installation medium, if possible a LiveCD available via bittorrent.
Additionally, do I need any special care while repartitioning HDD in UEFI based Win 7 systems? If the above Linux distro has good tools for this purpose, it'll make life easier for me.
Thanks in advance for the help.
72 • @71 Dual boot with UEFI Win 7 (by Oliver on 2013-10-31 08:44:22 GMT from Germany)
I dual or triple boot my desktop (BIOS) and notebook (UEFI) with Linux, Win 7, Win XP and Win 8 and found the following setup very convenient:
I don't install Linux's boot loader to the the boot partition. Instead I install it into the Linux partition itself and create a new entry for the Windows boot loader to chainload it. I use EasyBCD to create the OS entry. Then I suppress the selection screen / countdown for the Linux loader and select the OS at startup from the Windows loader.
GParted should be able to shrink the Windows partition even with GPT / UEFI. But my recommendation would be to get a an additional HDD / SSD as they are very cheap nowadays.
The only critical part would be not overwriting the Windows boot loader with the Linux install, but any mainstream Linux distribution should supply the necessary options. Ubuntu and Mint do.
Best regards, Oliver
73 • @71 Duel Boot Win 7 (by Rev_Don on 2013-10-31 13:31:35 GMT from United States)
If your desktop didn't come with a Windows 7 disk then it should have a Recovery Partition and software to create a set of Recovery Disks. You can also create a Win 7 System Repair Disk from your existing install. See http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/create-a-system-repair-disc for more information on doing that.
You can also legally download an actual Windows 7 install disk ISO image from http://forum.notebookreview.com/windows-os-software/604187-legal-download-digitalriver-windows-7-sp1-13-languages.html .
74 • RE 58 and 59 Fedora "respins" (by dbrion on 2013-10-31 15:17:14 GMT from France)
Well, I was glad , thanks :wq, to know that there were 'stable' versions, too, of their respins and the link they give is interesting with another respect :
respins are sorted by popularity (there, translates as number of downloads) and electronic lab had a high score (immediatley behind DE -except Compiz/mate, which is unpopular ...; above sugar, a musician -oriented respin, a artist oriented one). I thought very little people were interested in electronics (and there is a huge increase of electronic software which become GNUlinux supported : 5 years ago, they were very few).
I use FC-Electronic to know what is inside the next Fedora, though their DE, now, is very uncomfortable (looks like a "smart" "phone"). Once Fedora officially releases a comfortable **and** official DE -such as LXDE-, I install it and put the softwares I am interested in/ find interesting -it is faster than looking how to install them from source or how to convert apt-get orders into rpm orders -main packages have often the same nomenclature, whatever the distribution : perhaps package management does not need to be unified-
From their build log, one can see (by downloading and looking for software names)
wget http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org//work/tasks/3310/6113310/livecd.log
grep ffice livecd.log
Retrieving http://infrastructure.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/development/20/i386/os/Packages/l/libreoffice-calc-4.1.2.3-3.fc20.i686.rpm ...OK
they use to day libreoffice as a suite (in 2011, they used vym, View Your Mind , an idea manager -which has been kept: what about people having no ideas?). What I find missing (but is in FC repos or can be built from source) are cross compilers/debuggers for Texas msp430 -very cheap and low consuming 16 bits controllers- and for ARMs , getting popular, too.
Some applications lose functionalities on a live CD (one cannot manage to have a USB-serial readable/writeable by user -settings would be lost- ; therefore, programming a device through USB is difficult) and need full installation ...
75 • @ 67 Wolf (by Chanath on 2013-10-31 18:28:23 GMT from Sri Lanka)
Dear Wolf, thanks for your reply. Try to translate the Voyager website into English. Voyager is a respin. He practically says so. You cannot upgrade from one to the newer. So, if you feel like using Voyager, you'd have to have a separate home partition.
I also think that neither Mir nor Wayland would be in 14.04. I only wish it would.
I love to respin. That's the freedom Linux gives. For example, I like Word 2000, so if I am using a distro for long, I uninstall the Office Suite and install Word 2000 through Wine. Making a Pear OS or ZorinOS out of Ubuntu is a pretty easy thing.
Have you noticed that in Plank, you can't place the clock, logout, power-off, notifications and other needed icons? That's why a Wingpanel is needed. This Plank works like the Gnone2 type bottom panel, as there is no way to hold "window list" in the Wingpanel. The system is like a 2-panel system of Gnome2/Gnome Classic. You see, even the simple Lxpanel holds the "window list." In eOS, there is no way out of the top panel and bottom panel way.
If you liquidate Plank and the Wingpanel, keeping all the eOS apps, and install Cairo dock, you have fully working one dock/panel system eOS Luna. The "new" Slingshot would still work and open in the top left corner. The present Wingpanel is an unresponsive, meaning useless, and in eOS, it holds a button to open the Slingshot menu, hold a clock in the middle and hold the rest of the icons in the right corner. What else can it do? It can't even autohide.
Okay, you like the eOS, and that's the freedom of Linux. And, I like to respin. I also like lovely distros/respins like Deepin, Oz Unity, Voyager, and with them I play too. In one partition, I am already using Ubuntu 14.04 from the daily cdimage. Linux is superb in that way!
76 • @72, 73 (by Anony Moss on 2013-10-31 18:56:43 GMT from India)
Oliver, Rev_Don, thank you. I read some articles on Win 7 and UEFI, and upon checking some settings it seems Win 7 is not installed on this machine in the UEFI mode, which sounds like good news.
The information both of you provided has been helpful. Oliver, I'll use your tips if the straightforward Linux installation runs into rough weather. Rev, that was really helpful information, it also reminded me that I did make some OEM recovery DVDs once. Still, it's reassuring that the OS images are available to download. Good to see Microsoft playing well for once.
I'm downloading Ubuntu 13.10 and will try installing with it. The choice has to do with it being a recent release, having a newer kernel, and the ubuntu site having a small and clean writeup about UEFI. I've yet to ascertain if I would need GParted, I guess I'll first take a look at what the disk partitioning tool in Ubuntu CD shows and advises me.
77 • Open Source is all about real democracy! (by Transform Humanity on 2013-11-01 17:53:24 GMT from India)
#42 "We would see far, far more progress if instead of everybody trying to roll their own special snowflake, they instead combined their efforts with currently existing projects."
Open source is more like a real democracy unlike the very fake democratic governments of the world - You really can do what you want to do! Nobody gets hurt because you are doing what you want to do.
78 • Follow up on Win 7 dual-boot setup (by Anony Moss on 2013-11-01 21:10:54 GMT from India)
Just here to report how it went. Partitioned Win 7 creating a new 40 GB partition, used thw inbuilt windows shrink utility that worked fine. So did not need GParted. Next I installed Ubuntu 13.10 after booting up the LiveCD desktop.
I was disappointed to see that Ubuntu did not even give an option to set the GRUB boot order. I had to do it by hand later. Nice UI colour scheme, feel and polish to Ubuntu, but I am underwhelmed so far with what's under the hood. The system utilities look quite sparse so far in the desktop edition. Most of Canonical's effort seem to go in Ubuntu One store and Cloud, both of which personally I have little interest in. I'd rather just email my documents to NSA.
I'll probably wait to see how the upcoming OpenSuse release shapes up, and then install it as a serious distro. Or maybe Slackware and Salix once the new versions are out.
Thanks for the helpful tips.
79 • MakuluLinux (by Jacque Raymer on 2013-11-02 07:55:15 GMT from South Africa)
@78 - Maybe you should try MakuluLinux ? it has just surpassed Ubuntu in the Distrowatch 7 day rankings and is holding at number 3 spot.
Features :
Makululinux runs on debian testing
Its easy to use.
Very fast and very smooth.
Preloaded with most common software people use.
No paid software.
Live support offered.
Installing Debian based distro's can be tricky for first timer, but there is a youtube video that guides you.
you can view a clip of installation and use here : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQaLp5Kv2MQ
80 • Whiskers menu in Xfce (by Barnabyh on 2013-11-02 10:58:47 GMT from Hong Kong)
@32 Why would that be the future of Xfce? The default menu is fine and in fact much more straightforward. But then I also never liked the Kick-off menu, Lancelot, 'The Slab' in GNOME2 or the new menu that Cinnamon came up with, so I'm probably hopeless ;-).
81 • @80 Whisker Menu in XFCE (by Rev_Don on 2013-11-02 15:45:13 GMT from United States)
I wouldn't say you were hopeless, Like a lot of people you have grown accustomed to menus (and probably computers in general) working a certain way and don't feel the need to change. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. If numerous others hadn't felt that way we wouldn't have had MATE or Cinnamon replicating the good old "it just works and stays out of my way" Gnome 2 desktop experience after Unity, Gnome 3, and KDE 4 went over the top with their glitzy, in your face interfaces.
82 • @79 (by Anony Moss on 2013-11-02 17:53:03 GMT from India)
Thanks, looks interesting. I may try out Makulu after Suse in the coming month.
83 • @78 Unity and dumbed down desktop environments (by fernbap on 2013-11-02 18:34:04 GMT from Portugal)
It is clear from your post that the reason why you didn't like Ubuntu is the fact that Unity is a dumbed down DE, and you are the kind of user that prefer to have more control.
If that is the case, avoid Unity and Gnome 3 at all costs. But don't worry, you have many DEs to chose from even from Ubuntu: Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu.
Personally i would recommend KDE or MATE, but you have many to chose from.
I sugest that, prior to chosing your distro, try different DEs and pick your choice.
BTW, that is why it is my opinion that Ubuntu is hurting Linux: a windows newcomer will try Ubuntu and think that that is what Linux is. Rest assured, it isn't.
84 • @83 (by mandog on 2013-11-03 16:23:14 GMT from Peru)
Correction a windows newcomer will try Ubuntu and think wow so this is LInux.
most young people are street wise and Unity/Gnome shell meet there creds not some old fashioned out of date monstrosity imitating Ms. or worse from the last century.
85 • Linux DE (by tdockery97 on 2013-11-03 18:18:10 GMT from United States)
I have to agree with mandog on this one. I'm 64 and have been into personal computing since the DOS days, and use MATE or KDE myself. In my opinion the new generation of Linux users will most likely flock to the new interfaces like Unity and Gnome Shell.
86 • @84,86 (by fernbap on 2013-11-04 00:33:56 GMT from Portugal)
First of all, i was responding to
" but I am underwhelmed so far with what's under the hood. The system utilities look quite sparse so far in the desktop edition."
Obviously, the one that made that post don't like dumbed down desktops, and my post was regarding that issue to that particular poster.
As to my own opinion on Ubuntu, i think that if windows users like dumbed down desktops, they will simply continue to use windows. As simple as that.
Number of Comments: 86
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