Slashdot Mirror

Don't forget the other sourcebased distros as well. Note that Sourcemage and Lunar have already gone through the control issues while splitting from Sorcerer.

and you can find it here.

Sometimes I wish there was the equivalent of Windows Update for Linux.

SuSE has a utility called YaST Online Update (YOU), which has similar functionality to Windows Update. Works great for me.

I'm sure other distros have similar features. Do some looking around on Google or Distrowatch.

in the review is a BSOD.

What's more, a fatal exception has occured at F0AD:42494C4C.

What happened to distrowatch.com? I haven't been able to connect for the last couple days.

Why do I need 4 CD-R burning programs? Just give me the one that works the best, that's *all I care about*

What's best for you may not be best for someone else. For example, the general masses would probably vote open office as the best. But I prefer gnumeric over Open Office's spreadsheet. I think RedHat does a pretty good job at picking out which apps are truely the best, and which have competitors and let you decide. So which is best for you? KDE? GNOME? XPDE? Who's to say? There are 100s of distros to choose from at DistroWatch, im sure there is one there that will fit your needs.

If you're looking to try out SuSE and are a very busy, download the live-eval ISO image. Burn it, boot, and run from CD. No need to struggle with scripts, partitions or file systems.

BTW, if you absulutely need the latest, you may want to consider a source distribution like gentoo. These are usually the most up-to-date distros with the latest goods.

And curiously, if (KDE 3.1 rulez), why SuSE? 8.2 will be the first SuSE release with KDE 3.1. The current release, SuSE 8.1, ships with KDE 3.0.3. I suppose you could update to KDE 3.1 after installing. But then again, you could do that with any distribution (read: one that you are familiar with).

Jeepers will you all cut it out already. Let the man try Redhat, and let him hear about the alternatives: here here here here and here.

Ten'll get you one he'll eventually be installing this distro with a 2.6 kernel and either Redhat or Debian based, and he won't give a rat's ass about all this trash you're talking.

We now return you to your regularily schedualled flamewar...

(Sorry, I'm about to flame a Linux distro... Posting anonymously to dodge Karma burns ;) )

Ok everyone seems to agree that Yoper doesn't really have anything special. It's just slackware + alien... Also I guess I'm not the only one here finding the catchphrase "Your Operating System!" just super cheesy... Also, what's with their product page? A huge PNG image? Doesn't even look good...

I have no problem with people trying to make money selling Linux. But do they have to insist so much on the Yoper(TM) all over the place. The domain is of course a dot-com, the first link on their navigation menu is "Store"... Sorry but half of my BS alarm have already been tripped...

But I get specially annoyed when due credit isn't given. Where is the page that says that their YDesktop is just KDE with the nice "K" replaced by an ugly "Y"? But I'm sure you will easily find the page where you can order "YDesktop Pack 1.0 for only $98"... I mean, their pages hardly mention it's a linux distro. Let's play a game: try to count how many times the word "Linux" appears on their site...

We could go on about how their site should be nominated for www.webpagesthatsuck.com (check the "About" link at the top... that actually takes you to the FAQ... Hello? HTML formatting anyone?), how their "user community" seems to have a count of 3 (oh but wait, these 3 are actully just flaming the distro on its own boards...)...

Ok, so if we agree Yoper kinda sucks...

so the question is, how in h*ll did they make it to #1 on Distrowatch?

*cough*cheaters*cough*faking*chough*hits*cough*. ..

while there's no ppc downloads available on the site itself, their ftp mirors DO have 9.1 beta iso's available. the most recent being from 2/5.

check out a review of 9.1 installed on an imac at distrowatch

I think DistroWatch puts it best:

"Put fun back into computing. Use Linux."

FreeBSD is good, too.

Personally, I've always found Windows to be boring. But that's just me. I found Linux to be extremely powerful, including on the desktop. There is so much you can do, that you simply cannot do in Windows.

But hey, its not necessarilly for everyone. One man's fun is another man's headache. If you think WinXP is a better desktop OS, by all means, use it. But for me, I'm much more comfortable in Linux/UNIX.

That only tells you who is going to go there and do that, and its a rather slow indication of the popularity of a distro because of how popularity takes hold. Also, some distros are going to have more zealots than others ("Everybody! Go to linuxcounter and prove to the world that our distro is the most popular!").

A faster indication is from distrowatch. The difference here is that the number of people INTERESTED in the distro determine the popularity.

Here's their actual stats (and though I hate to admit it, Lindows is holding strong at #9).

That only tells you who is going to go there and do that, and its a rather slow indication of the popularity of a distro because of how popularity takes hold. Also, some distros are going to have more zealots than others ("Everybody! Go to linuxcounter and prove to the world that our distro is the most popular!").

A faster indication is from distrowatch. The difference here is that the number of people INTERESTED in the distro determine the popularity.

Here's their actual stats (and though I hate to admit it, Lindows is holding strong at #9).

Ask when someone will write a truly new and brilliant GPL Linux game comparable to mainstream Windows PC?

My Debian GNU/Linux although an excellent OS, is sadly lacking in this area.

...those who tend to prefer distributions in the Red Hat/RPM lineage to the Debian/apt-get lineage

Some distibutions have both. I'm surprised more people don't use this one. It's almost like a hybrid of Mandrake and Debian. (Leaning closer to Mandrake, but less big-endian by default.) I wish more distributions did it this way.

Why don't you check your facts before posting?

1) As others have pointed out, this is a *Beta*, RedHat 8.0.92 to be exact, so many things can change between now and when 8.1 is released
2) This beta actually *includes* KDE 3.1(RC5 or CVS I guess) see http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=redh at or check the RPMs in the FTP, or install the damn thing!
3) This is *exactly* the same as with Gnome, the beta includes the latest Gnome 2.1(from CVS I think), that by the time 8.1 final is released will become Gnome 2.2(and the same is also true for XFree 4.3)
4) KDE on RedHat is/was not "crippled", I will not bother arguing about this, but if you think the version in 8.0 was "crippled", then doesn't mater what version they ship in the next release you will think the same.
5) You can be sure that RedHat 8.1 final release will include KDE 3.1, you may think that it's still "crippled" though...
(BTW, Gnome 2.2 and KDE 3.1 are both looking very good, I'm sure RH8.1 will be a great release, even better than 8.0, and 8.0 was already very nice)

Hope this sets some facts straight, BTW, I don't even run Linux or KDE/Gnome on my boxes(I administer a few RedHat desktops running both KDE and Gnome at work though), I love my FreeBSD box with Ion, just hate to see people spreading misinformation.

Best wishes and do some research before you post next time!

\\Uriel

I run ClarkConnect on my firewall. Redhat, Debian, Gentoo, Lunar and Slackware on my *personal* box. Lycoris on my wife's box (no humorous responses please).
While the individual merits of each distro can be argued to no end, I do have to note that only Lycoris and ClarkConnect (Based om RH 7.2) worked perfectly out of the box. (Inasmuch as Windoze does)
Noting that, I would say that if you want to learn the differences between the distros, you should first learn how to multi-boot your machine. The greatest learning experience for me has been to have a working distro available at all times, while I'm trying to get a new (to me) distro working that I'm not familiar with. (Such as linux-from-scratch)
Anyway, I hope I haven't strayed too far from the subject, but I had to add my $.02.
In short, IMHO, if you are a complete newbie, learn how to multi-boot, install Lycoris, Mandrake and Debian. (or go to DistroWatch and pick a couple.) Graduate from one to the next while keeping your working distro intact. Then, Paraphrasing another post I read "apt-get when you finally get it together" - lol.
Happy Thanksgiving!

While the various larger distributions are geared towards multimedia functionality to different degrees, it obviously depends exactly what you want out of your box and how much you want to play with the guts (hardware and software). Many people would be happy with a DVD/VCD/mp3 player rather than a full-blown PVR, and I'm not sure how much freedom you'll get in this area with Media Center Pc's - I doubt this version of XP is designed around being able to rip, mix and burn ;) This is where some of the other Linux projects come in (some focussed on the embedded market only though). Maybe distribution in the classical sense was not the best of description for me to use, although projects like Flamethrower Linux are aiming for that - RedHat and Debian are working on multimedia based distributions, altho they are aimed more at the multimedia worker rather than player.

Projects like Dave/Dina, homeDVR, OpenPVR, MythTV and FreeVo aim at homebrew boxes somewhat akin to the Media Center idea and there are a myriad of sources for building boxes that do as much if not more than the Media Center. Flexibility is always good IMHO, and if you can start with a box that may just do DVD, DivX, CD's, mp3's and ogg, but expand it into a classic gaming machine running MAME et al as well as serving up content to the rest of your flat/house/hovel then that is "a good thing". More info at ding, eboxy.

Remember that Linux is used for commercial PVR's (and the Moxi Media Center) too and while there are companies that do these things commercially, that's normally a sign of open versions being around somewhere, especially if you like to get your hands dirty :) If you don't, then it won't be long before you new (or old) console will be able to fulfill many of these functions, again, they already can to a degree, if you don't mind hacking away a bit.

1) If you want the best performace with linux, you will propably have to re-compile everything. You can do all this by hand by following the procedures giving by the Linux from Scratch projet. If this is too much for you, you can go with source-type distributions.

2) If you don't want to go down the "compile-for-3-days" path, you can try modern distros of linux or BSD: FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD (there is a debian "port" of netbsd and one of freebsd that *could* make life easier). Most are compiled for i386 and can be used if you...

3) Carefully choose your applications! Don't use Kde or Gnome unless it has been carefully stripped of all the surplus. Don't use Mozilla, try pheonix instead.

4) Try it! The best way to know if this is better than that is to try it out.

If it's still too slow or un-usable for you, you can try to give you computer a specific task... like X-terminal or even a router...

I did make some old machines working again with these simples guidelines but i think the most important thing is to...

5)Have fun! I know i did!

1) If you want the best performace with linux, you will propably have to re-compile everything. You can do all this by hand by following the procedures giving by the Linux from Scratch projet. If this is too much for you, you can go with source-type distributions.

2) If you don't want to go down the "compile-for-3-days" path, you can try modern distros of linux or BSD: FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD (there is a debian "port" of netbsd and one of freebsd that *could* make life easier). Most are compiled for i386 and can be used if you...

3) Carefully choose your applications! Don't use Kde or Gnome unless it has been carefully stripped of all the surplus. Don't use Mozilla, try pheonix instead.

4) Try it! The best way to know if this is better than that is to try it out.

If it's still too slow or un-usable for you, you can try to give you computer a specific task... like X-terminal or even a router...

I did make some old machines working again with these simples guidelines but i think the most important thing is to...

5)Have fun! I know i did!

1) If you want the best performace with linux, you will propably have to re-compile everything. You can do all this by hand by following the procedures giving by the Linux from Scratch projet. If this is too much for you, you can go with source-type distributions.

2) If you don't want to go down the "compile-for-3-days" path, you can try modern distros of linux or BSD: FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD (there is a debian "port" of netbsd and one of freebsd that *could* make life easier). Most are compiled for i386 and can be used if you...

3) Carefully choose your applications! Don't use Kde or Gnome unless it has been carefully stripped of all the surplus. Don't use Mozilla, try pheonix instead.

4) Try it! The best way to know if this is better than that is to try it out.

If it's still too slow or un-usable for you, you can try to give you computer a specific task... like X-terminal or even a router...

I did make some old machines working again with these simples guidelines but i think the most important thing is to...

5)Have fun! I know i did!

Show me some examples.

For info on the packages in linex check here.

There are no packages that would suggest that. You can check the source to see if there are specific changes.

That is the beauty of Open Source you can check the source. Which is again my question can you show me some examples. Of this. I agree it is a possible dark side but the system of Open Source has checks and balances against that. More so then corporate software.

This parent is a troll.

Because, after all, developing a new Linux distro really is the same thing as developing some private software from scratch.

Read the developer's mailing lists for any given distribution that has one. It's not easy--in fact, its really quite hard. Private software has it tough too, but getting all these new software packages that often break binary compatibility to interpolate properly is exceedingly difficult--often times packages fail silently and it takes time to even detect a symptom, and after that finding the source can take weeks! The private software authors have this problem to some extent, but not like distros.

Because, after all, it's not like those private companies would have to start from scratch, while the Linux distro has half the work done for them already.

Actually, I'd venture to say private companies re-use as much code as OSS developers. As for the individual packages, many of the core utilities in Win2k have been around with few or no updates since '95! These issues just aren't as prevalent or detectable without sites like distrowatch which tabulate the various packages and version numbers that make up a distro.

Because, after all, the private company would have to release a fully feature complete and bug tested piece of software, while all United Linux has to do is release something that boots.

UnitedLinux is a joint commercial venture by respected Linux distributors. Their product must be good--plenty of venture capital has been invested in them, and the individual members have burnt a lot of funds on UL. Just because they draw mostly from tools developed via a different software development model doesn't mean that they aren't trying to compete in the business world via the same means as "private software companies." In fact, you contrasted a hypothetical "private company" to UL, even though UL is, more or less, a "private company!"

Nice analogy there. Apples and oranges, very nice.

Nice rebuttal there. Unfortunately, UL is a private company, developing distros is as difficult as private ventures, and you sir are a troll.

'Tseems the site has all but yielded already. You can find some info at Distrowatch

Don't forget the roots, either: http://linux.corel.com/

No free download so you'll have to shell out US$99 for it but you do get an enhanced (?) version of KDE 2.2 and built-in Cross-Over Plugin and Office! Finally a decent challenger to Lycoris and also what Lindows should have been...

Big, big mistake. In fact, if they don't provide some kind of live-cd, ala SuSE, they'll completely flop. It's that simple. No one will pay for an OS that they haven't used at a friends house or can freely try it out on their own, especially when the packages are so out-of-date (all these "Windows-killers" seem to use that same outdated version of KDE). Check out the Xandros page at distrowatch and see for yourself.

LindowsOS saved itself by coming pre-installed on WalMart PC's--Xandros will have to try and pull some similar maneuvre. As I see it, there's no way in hell other *NIX users will pay for something they already have, and Windows users are skeptical of change as is ("You mean to tell me they're making this for free?" usually sets them off).

If Xandros were the best desktop distro ever, it wouldn't matter if they couldn't get people to try it, and then buy it. I hope they do in the future, because I'm actually interested in this.

Funny, I've had talks with 2 guys who run BSD, (freebsd and one netbsd), and both just wanted KOffice, but didnt want to bother with the (their terms) Bloat of KDE. Both came back with the same argument, If I wanted that fluff, I'd run XP.

These guys will spend hours tweaking the the look of window maker and not realize thats EXACT reason why people want KDE.
But KDE goes a step further to offer all the Glueware apps people want, remote desktop control, pim syncronizers, mime type GRAPHICAL file managers, and the other countless useability features they put into the desktop.

BTW, I'm super freaking happy Mosfet is BACK, and releasing a new Liquid engine/theme for KDE. This and the new XFT2 font anti-aliasing, I could do the happy dance. :)
-
Distrowatch

Why should I use Gentoo? Really. Is there some huge feature comparison matrix for all the different distros? Is there really any major innovation between distros?

Exactly. Check out Distro Watch for a list of the best distributions. They even have the packages that are included in each, as well as pros and cons, and reviews.

Red Hat 8.0's new consistency is provided using Xft2/Freetype with 'heavy modifications' and the Bluecurve theme. Underneath remember, it's still Gnome 2 and/or KDE.

The world is a big free and happy place. Which means you too can have the Red Hat desktop goodness on your distribution of choice and not have to complain about Taiwanese flags, RPM, additional packages for MP3 playback etc.

I haven't got a hard disc spare to install Red Hat 8.0 on (I'd really like to see it based on all the screenshots), but I do have a couple of Debian systems. Someone could make me a very happy man (and earn some serious karma) by taking the bits that are good about Red Hat 8.0 and making them available in other distributions.

That's how Linux works. Take the bits you like, ignore the bits you don't. Is Bluecurve on Freshmeat's themes section yet?

Knoppix is a great idea, but it requires a lot of memory or else a hard drive with a swap partition, and the article mentioned older PC's. As long as there is swap, it will detect it automatically and start using it. FYI, Distrowatch is now tracking this distro: knoppix

Libranet is Debian with KDE 3.03 and a few other newer packages (see Libranet) Libranet tends to have newer packages than the current stable. Due to some delays that the KDE maintainers have put on the KDE waiting for a bug free release, KDE 3 is not on the offical mirrors of Debian right now. There are unoffical debs available and you can always go to the source code, not the way to go on a binary release. Debian has chosen to support many different platforms and therefore is forced to be slower than a one platform release like Libranet.

The problem is if there isn't a deb supplied by Libranet you forced to the source. I found that out when I went looking for Kwintv. If I wanted the deb from the offical Debian mirror I would have to uninstall 150+ packages, all of KDE3, needless to say I canceled that option.

It really amazing when looking at Distro Watch
How many distro's for Linux there are around. Some spouting optimised for 686 or desktop or server env. If you really are into Linux for the long haul, most of us usually do end up either rebuilding our packages or upgrading to a newer version before the actual vendor does. Be it because the package was fsck-up or because or some vendor favors a package verses another and doesn't look at the big picture of the software overall extending the software to it's fullest capabilities. my current dist is Arch Linux. Shameless plug I know, but this dist for the most part meets my current needs.

Does this mean that the guy from last week will now have 38 Operating Systems on 1 PC?

Since the lunar-linux site is probably bogged down at the moment, you can probably grab an ISO from:

DistroWatch

or

LinuxISO.org

Get a source distro! Nothing beats a compile-yourself distribution optimized for your system in every ELF:

lunar linux
Gentoo
Rock linux
Sorcerer linux
SourceMage

In the end... binary distro's are just like windoze

So it comes down to either wait 8 hours for it to compile (portage), or wait 8 hours to figure out the dependencies (rpm), or wait 8 months for someone to package it (deb).

Actually, variety is exactly what you're getting when Red Hat does some work to create a unified desktop that didn't exist before. Now we have GNOME, KDE, and Red Hat's own creation.

If you don't like Red Hat's desktop, try out another one.

Also for a good bit of information of what Libranet has check out this

Over the years Red Hat has stifled the competition so effectively that the number of Linux distributions has "declined" from 2 (Red Hat and Slackware) to 42 with new distributions arriving on the scene every week (Gentoo, Lycoris).

Check out Distro Watch Very nice way to tell which version of software each distro is running, and current builds. (91 distros on page) Take a look at the newest Redhat vs Mandrake builds, and the software versions.

Quick glance, GLIBC is at 2.2.5 stable.
Mandrake is 2.2.5
Redhat is 2.2.90.

Is RedHat upto building a "off" distro again?

Over the years Red Hat has stifled the competition so effectively that the number of Linux distributions has "declined" from 2 (Red Hat and Slackware) to 42 with new distributions arriving on the scene every week (Gentoo, Lycoris).

Check out Distro Watch Very nice way to tell which version of software each distro is running, and current builds. (91 distros on page) Take a look at the newest Redhat vs Mandrake builds, and the software versions.

Quick glance, GLIBC is at 2.2.5 stable.
Mandrake is 2.2.5
Redhat is 2.2.90.

Is RedHat upto building a "off" distro again?

Over the years Red Hat has stifled the competition so effectively that the number of Linux distributions has "declined" from 2 (Red Hat and Slackware) to 42 with new distributions arriving on the scene every week (Gentoo, Lycoris).

Check out Distro Watch Very nice way to tell which version of software each distro is running, and current builds. (91 distros on page) Take a look at the newest Redhat vs Mandrake builds, and the software versions.

Quick glance, GLIBC is at 2.2.5 stable.
Mandrake is 2.2.5
Redhat is 2.2.90.

Is RedHat upto building a "off" distro again?

Google is your friend... Look at DistroWatch. I thoguht Turbo initially was a distro that would try to tailor to your arch a little better, thus perform better.. but I think they turned into another standard GUI-based Mandrake/Redhat pretty install.

You forgot Gentoo - Even more hard core than Slackware; use if you are into watching your machine stroke out in a compile-fest. emerge is your friend. It's neat to watch my spare box (Celery466) sit off to the side mired in building KDE from scratch. :)

This is true, but I would rather have small, fast, solid base system that can be easily added to. Something like Gentoo with an installer.

>That'S what RPMs are for. Despite Win32 installation program, RPM keeps track of dependencies. Windows can't do that out of the box

RPM's have problems too. I think Linux would gain by moving away from package systems and moving to using an installer. There are plenty of Linux apps out there that do come with installers like Netscape, OOo, SO, Kylix, Loki. All of these installed beautify on my system. I don't know how well any of those installers would work for other applications, but maybe some sort of functional universal installer would go a long way. IMHO, this is one of the two largest problems facing Linux. The other major problem is that the RH limbo beta 2 C++ binaries will not run on the beta 3 system. I do realize there has been major changes to GCC recently, but I think this sets a new record for lack of backwards compatibility. These two things are playing the biggest part in holding Linux back from the desktop space. I had many of my windows apps replaced, but many of the apps I used are broken after I updated to QT3 and GCC 3. This is an important issue as major Linux releases usually come more frequent than windows and it hinders commercial support.

I think if Linux does hit desktop space there will have to be LSB support for an /apps directory or similar. LSB does not really address desktop needs to the extent that it should, I have 20 or so text editors and word processors, most of them in separate locations, /apps/textedit would be nice.

>kDevelop, Kylix, only to name the two most professional ones. For Windows there MSVC++, which is actually a neat DevIDE, but it costs quite much and has issues of its own.

I have used Kylix a few times but mostly for little stuff. It is probably the closest thing Linux has to VS.NET, too bad more people don't use it. Delphi has never really gotten the credit it deserves, and Borland only recently added C++ support, maybe it will pick up in popularity soon.

>Linux can be a pain in the ass. Setting up a system is, for a (technical skilled) newbie much more difficult than setting up a Win32 box. Trying to make Linux do something can be quite some (research) work, and during that time you may say 'Oh what a crap system, nothing works.', but once you figured out how to do it right, Linux will rarely fail at its new job.

I think the initial install is something Linux has improved on, I actually like Mandrake's DrakeX more than Windows' installer.

>WinXP, on the other hand, is the best piece of code that left MS for a few years. It's stable, clearly multimedia-orientated, has a neat UI-design and runs everything you want. But it can be as much as pain in the butt as Linux, when your apps start crashing because you uninstalled a small shareware tool which removed a crucial DLL. Let a newbie figure that out... :o

I find when I am in Windows I miss many of the command Line functions of Linux, and when I am in Linux I miss many of the multimedia apps and GUI of Windows. I liked 2K more than XP, and don't get crashes because I am picky about the code I run on my system. I have had 2 crashes on my XP system; the first was when I killed some services the system needed to boot, the second was when I was using tweakXP with WindowBlinds. My stratagy for keeping windows stable is to run as little code as possible when it boots. It leaves a much smaller footprint in memory and is much less likely to crash. I also usually gut windows pretty thoroughly and make extensive changes to the default install before building on it. A few of the changes I make to my system can be found here and here.

PS. Interesting RPM rant here

There is a list of Chinese distros [distrowatch.com] here and distrowatch also mentions the major distros [distrowatch.com] that can handle Chinese. These are Mandrake, Red Hat, Debian and Turbo Linux.

There is a list of Chinese distros [distrowatch.com] here and distrowatch also mentions the major distros [distrowatch.com] that can handle Chinese. These are Mandrake, Red Hat, Debian and Turbo Linux.

If you want to know what package versions various distros and betas are using go to distrowatch.com. A list of packages for the top 10 distros can be found here

If you want to know what package versions various distros and betas are using go to distrowatch.com. A list of packages for the top 10 distros can be found here

There's no need to list them here. Go to distrowatch and have a look! There is the top 10 list on the right side of that page.

Was this just intuition on the part of the author? I find that hard to believe.
It's not intuition. The author (Ladislav Bodnar) also happens to run the website Distrowatch. Assuming a sufficiently large number of linux users use this site to get info on linux distributions, his noticing the HPD (hits per day) of Mandrake reducing and those of Gentoo increasing is an indicator of growing interest in source based distros.

preloaded with ThizLinux, whatever the fsck that is

DistroWatch Answers.