Slashdot Mirror

http://distrowatch.com/stats.php

How can you get any "wider adoption" than that?

You too can listen as well as anyone else. This is not an issue of the linux community not listening to somebody. This is not Windows. It's a different environment, and it doesn't work the way you think it should. That doesn't mean it can't work.

Practice what you preach and listen ...

"I'd be happy if Dell supported one distro (or hell, even netBSD). It would mean that other distro's could look at the drivers used & have an easy time supporting Dell."

As soon as that happened the rest of the linux community could more easily get their distro of choice working on Dell machines as well. Why is that so hard to understand? That's how the linux community works.

- Kevin

While I don't have experience with that machine...I will point you to DistroWatch. Gotta be something there that will work.

Slackware-based distros are a lot faster, by the way – my laptop (233MHz, 96MB RAM) would likely choke on Red Hat, I know my old laptop (133MHz, 80MB RAM) did. But using Ultima Linux, my own Slack-based system, even running KDE, Enlightenment, Firefox, OOo, and even an NES emulator doesn't seem to break the system. Which is a good thing. I like NES games ;-)

I'm not a buisness expert, but can't you uninstall anything the hell you want from windows ('cept IE, admittedly) and make an image from that disk, and image it to 50,000+ PC's you sell? Also, can you put firefox on that 1st pc, and make it the default before you make the image? They do it with Symantec/Norton Security Suite all the time. And, can't Dell write a program to present the user with choices of defaults to use?

How much other stuff does OS X stuff in to an operating system? Safari. iChat, iTunes, iWeb, f**king DVD authoring. MS doesn't include half that stuff, and the Mac folks see iLife as a feature. You have to feel sorry for Microsoft.

I'm not a buisness expert, but can't you uninstall anything the hell you want from windows ('cept IE, admittedly) and make an image from that disk, and image it to 50,000+ PC's you sell? Also, can you put firefox on that 1st pc, and make it the default before you make the image? They do it with Symantec/Norton Security Suite all the time. And, can't Dell write a program to present the user with choices of defaults to use?

How much other stuff does OS X stuff in to an operating system? Safari. iChat, iTunes, iWeb, f**king DVD authoring. MS doesn't include half that stuff, and the Mac folks see iLife as a feature. You have to feel sorry for Microsoft.

Over the summer I finally got around to building my own brand-new machine – after dealing with 566MHz + 256MB RAM for several years I figured it was finally upgrade time. I went on TigerDirect.com and grabbed everything I needed:

• 2.4GHz Celeron
• 512MB PC3200 SDRAM
• 80GB hard disk
• 52x32x52x CD-RW drive
• Integrated video (i845GE)
• Integraded 5.1-channel audio
• Integrated 10/100 Ethernet
• NETGEAR WG311v2 wireless
• Übercool blue case w/keyboard and mouse

The entire thing came out at just $375. Obviously not the highest end system, but it's still pretty damn fast, and it can handle just about everything I need it to (including development of Ultima Linux).

Couple months ago I also got my hands on a used DVD drive for $5 at a local computer junk shop – it was marked as a CD-ROM drive, so I figured the hell with it. So now my machine can also play movies and stuff.

And considering that "typical work" for this machine consists of building a cloop or two, upgrading a few packages, running a couple different Web browsers to read /. or tweak my Web site, emulating some game console or other, playing a few rounds of SuperTux or Puzzle Pirates, testing the latest Ultima release in VMware or QEMU, and typing something in OpenOffice.org – and a lot of the time, all of those at once – I'd say that anything more's got to be overkill.

It's unlikely to work for all distributions as some distributions are intentionally scaled down. I estimate that there are some 300 distributions listed at http://distrowatch.com/stats.php [distrowatch]. I doubt that all of them have the level of autodetection that you want.

Epson Stylus CX4800 – nice people at Epson sent a free replacement/upgrade when my CX-4600 died after just ten months... even with the likes of me that's almost impossible.

Brother MFC-210C – yes, it does run on Linux now that they released the drivers.

But as far as my school district goes, the work seems to consist of spying on students who know more than them and blocking their perfectly innocent Web sites, locking down the computer settings to the point where you can't even lock your screen to keep people from messing with it if you're not at the machine, discovering that all the restrictions make it impossible to remote-install software without running into enough problems that any students and/or school people watching can't help but laugh, and yelling at students using SSH tunnels, Firefox, and anything else they don't understand.

Although then again, that's just what I know from my experience as the only student in the entire district who not only knows what Linux is, but also even has his own version.

I second the notion to just host it yourself on a Linux box, and use BitTorrent to handle stuff. I was in the exact same situation as you once with my own distro, Ultima – and look where it got me. I've had over 8000 downloads now, all running off 384k uplink, a 700MHz Duron, and endless BitTorrent seeding :-)

Couple tips if you're going to be creating a Linux distro:

Tell DistroWatch.com and get yourself famous. That's more or less how I got well-known. I'm not sure if they do the Windows-based distros, but it's worth a shot.

Know the good BitTorrent sites such as mininova, one of my own favorites, and The Linux Mirror Project. There's a ton of people on those sites who will download stuff just because it's there, and trust me, if you want instant fame that can be a very good thing.

If you need FTP, may I humbly suggest telling MadTux.org about your project. I myself heard of them when they e-mailed an offer to host my project for FTP download, and they're very, very friendly people. They do have a fee for downloaders, but to get your distro's ISO's or whatever hosted with them is free. (Tell them that I sent you, they'll know what to do ;-)

May be a few other things I've forgotten, but those are the big ones. Good luck!

No !!
Backup your important files,

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/windoze_partition

and replace old O$ with something better from here http://distrowatch.com/

Here's what I say: If you don't mind a slightly slower Internet connections and have no intentions of being /.ed, a home server is perfectly acceptable. I myself used to use GeoCities, Tripod, etc. a lot, but after a while kept having to move over because so-and-so had X feature that I wanted... drove me nuts, trying to find a free host that suited my needs.

Eventually I figured that since we have broadband I may as well set up my own machine as a server. Used to run off my desktop – not a good idea – but now I've got a dedicated machine that's been re-purposed as a server. Everything I need (PHP/Python, MySQL, as much space as I need, NO ADS...) and then some.

And this machine hasn't been too much of a problem even though (1) we've got about six or seven machines online ALL AT ONCE at any given time, including the server, and (2) since it's hosting what's now a fairly well-known Linux distro – my own of course, link to DistroWatch to save me bandwidth – and haven't had a problem.

I think the trick is really to just know what you're doing. Don't over-burden your connection, optimize your site for efficient bandwidth usage, use technologies like BitTorrent if you plan on distributing lots of large files, and things should be just fine.

Oh, and one more suggestion: Go with Linux... yes, I'm saying that partially because I'm a Linux developer and therefore would be somewhat biased, partially because it's better optimized for that type of thing, and partially because spending $1000+ on Windows Server for a tiny personal site [or even a large one like mine...] is just overkill. :-)

Do all your web business with a live CD. You can physically REMOVE the hard drive to ensure that it won't get infected with anything (all you have to do is unplug the IDE cable). Stick anything you want to download/save on a USB drive - you can even format it in FAT/etc. to keep it in Window's file system. Done with the web and need the hard drive, disconnect the ethernet cable (or whatever you use), virus-scan the USB storage, reconnect the hard drive, boot back to Windows. If any malware knows it's way around this method, I haven't met it yet!

> What on Earth is Kanotix? Is it Reinvented Wheel Linux number 14,389?

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=kano tix

It's a Knoppix-based LiveCD with a significant concentration on improving Knoppix's hard disk install capability. Distrowatch labels it as #15 in the Top 100.

> I'm so glad I found BSD all those years ago.

I'm glad for you too. I'm a Slackware man myself and haven't had a reason/opportunity to try the BSD's yet. I've heard good things about it, though, and it's certainly better than That Other OS. Just remember, we're all on the same side here. Live and let live :)

upgrade to faster connection, switch to kubuntu (free AND secure), or anything else equally secure.

If you need (unsecure) windows for anything, use vmware player (free), or wine (free), or if you need to play games with 3D acceleration then cedega (nonfree).

Remember about http://www.openoffice.org/ for office work, http://www.gimp.org/ for drawing, http://www.k3b.org/ for burning DVDs... and the list goes on and on.

ps: I've got some karma to burn, so here I'm whoring ;)

I would like to congratulate Mr. Krafft for homing in on a critical issue; that is, how to maximize and focus the efforts of people working on all of these various distributions, especially the ones that are derived from Debian, to benefit a main project. As an editor I know that 90% of the work in publishing is in achieving the last 5% of perfection. To my mind, the open source movement needs to polish one beautiful gem and give it to the world. Do that and astonishing things will happen. Take Firefox for example. But it appears to my inexperienced eye that a lot of effort is being distributed across a very wide field.

I confess that am new to the Linux world, but an old hand at computing. I successfully installed Gentoo on an old PIII as my first Linux project. I am glad I began with that difficult manual installation as I learned a tremendous amount. I did a lot of stuff with the command line, but wanted to see the GUI. Of course I could have installed a GUI environment under Gentoo, but I was curious to try something new.

The next distribution I tried was Debian. I loved its automatic installation, especially appreciated after my experiences with Fastab, Grub, and the rest. Some irritations with the printing system aside, I was impressed by the stability and completeness and professional look this system displayed under Gnome or KDE. And the galaxy of software available is astonishing. It left me with no doubt that sooner or later open source software will leave the server farm and be the norm on the desktop, at least in some computing environments. It seems to me particularly suited to educational environments, because only open source allows students to legally take apart their tools and see how they work. But I digress.

When I saw how many different distributions there are while doing a bit of research looking for a distribution for another old computer http://distrowatch.com/ I became concerned. Put plainly it seems to me that there are too many chiefs and not enough indians.

Hopefully Mr. Krafft's work can harness all of this creative energy and focus some of it back into some center or other. From my limited experience the Debian distribution seems very well suited as a candidate to champion.

I know of several:

Office Suite
Operating system
Software

Next week. While you are sitting there waiting to die, why not download & burn a live cd like Knoppix, Mepis, Ubuntu, etc. You can float above the wreck and wrack on one of them a while & still access files on the HD. Lots of choices at here. Whatever floats your boat... Good luck!

Stuff like this is why I just put Linux on my squeaky-new box.

Information of how to obtain a fix is available here.

I wonder where they innovated that from?.

Parent is not a flamebait. Since when is a private list of links news, especially when we have del.icio.us and powerful search engines? The bigger part of the link list is about linux distributions, but one link to Distrowatch would have been sufficient. From now on every submitted article about a private link list could be accepted.

It is updated constantly:
Look at Distrowatch

I'm rather happy to see that Micro$oft is selling more software than (what I'm assuming to mean) Linux developers. Because there are still more Linux servers in use than Windows, that can only mean that people are downloading the bloody operating system for free. Not like there's any shortage of sites...

Note the difference between selling (distributing in exchange for a fee) and using (making it do useful work).

Yay, misleading statistics!!

So: Start with bare computers, and the install disks for each system. To be fair, use five major Linux distros http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=major, and five of any non-Linux operating systems (This is fair because one Linux system is very different from another.). Your test subjects have to (a) install the system on the computers with NO expert assistance (they are allowed to consult all the manuals, books, and internet forums they need), and (b) are given one week each person/system-combo to complete a simple list of goals with each system: 1. Connect to the internet. 2. Send an email. 3. Compose a simple office memo and save it to removable media. 4. Play a movie. 5. Burn a set of songs onto a CD. 6. Load/install a game to a state of being playable, hardware issues be damned. By the way, no fair modifying the hardware given the subject, and no fair spending money on enhancements beyond the OS disks themselves. They can download all the freeware they want for any system.

At the end, subjects can report on their success or failure in the goals, and the relative ease with which they accomplished each.

As brownie-points: I offer my response to our recent Slashdot poll, in which I was the sole person to nominate you as the most accurate TV geeks: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168355&thresho ld=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=14074600 Note the date of Nov 20th. Almost like I knew you were coming, huh? We here will be eternally grateful if you can settle this once and for all.

And to everybody else on the board: I'm not interrested in your responses at all. I can hear the rest of you babble all year. I'm asking the Mythbusters team, and the Mythbusters team ONLY.

Besides, you can run a binary with any license.
I believe this is not about running a binary. I believe the issues are related to linking and possibly distributing the binary.

Are you suggesting that if I run a GPL'd binary under Solaris, that will somehow force Sun to GPL their whole OS?
I'm not suggesting anything. I'm asking if anyone has any more information regarding the CDDL and GPL imcompatibility and HOW that plays out with Sun & RedHat.

I'm not making this up. Here's an edited summary from distrowatch.com
"a new, unique distribution that attempts to marry the OpenSolaris kernel with GNU and Debian software utilities. Unfortunately, the two parties are covered with different and mutually incompatible licenses: while all GNU and Debian software is released under the GPL, OpenSolaris is licensed under the CDDL. This makes the attempted marriage rather awkward - as an example, one can't link a GPL-ed utility, such as Debian's APT against a CDDL-ed library, such as the C library that ships with OpenSolaris.

In their eagerness to release a product, the developers have decided to ignore the license incompatibility."

Well, what now?

The link for the unedited version:
http://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20051114

I recently downloaded and gave a try to Auditor, which comes bundled with a list of exploits for nearly all recent software flaws (not just Cisco) and for which there is a public advisory and exploit code available. Scary, but necessary. In the wrong hands though, this can be turned into a powerful DOS software collection.

For those who want to try this brand-new version, ISO images (CD,DVD, mini-CD and live-CD) of the 2006 have hit public FTP mirrors last week-end (note: the x86-64 version only comes as a 3-CD and mini-CD image). Tip: right after a fresh install, don't forget to apply all security and bugfixes updates if you want a secure and stable system.

Download mirrors are listed here.

All 2006 reviews have been summarized here.

Now, Mandriva is one distro with it's act together. No text-mode installer or arcane package manager syntax for Mandriva - it's the *easiest* distro you'll ever run. But that comes at a price, because it's also *hardest* for a developer to create an interface that's a smooth, seamless uh.. $EXPERIENCE than it is to just make the damn program work already and slap the command line interface on it with a shell script wrapper.

Its not just you; if you look at the last screenshot, you'll see they're still using OpenOffice.org 1.9.129 instead of 2.0.0 which was released over three weeks ago... If you check Ubuntu's entry on Distrowatch you'll see (under "snapshot") that they're still also using Firefox 1.0.7 instead of the nearly finished 1.5

To be fair though, after Breezy was released, a lot of the main people involved with Ubuntu went to Canada to attend UbuntuBelowZero, so they're just now getting back to business ;)

Fedora's #4 ranking on Distrowatch can hardly be called "marginal". Nevermind that one should also question the site's "page hit ranking" methodology before passing it off as representative, much less authoritative.

Why Fedora is so often considered the default target distribution I don't know. Even the project page states it's an unsupported, experimental OS, and one now comparitvely marginal when tallied.

Must be a case of 'brand leakage' from a distant past, one that held Redhat as the most popular desktop Linux distribution.

Shame, I guess IBM is missing out on where the real action is.

As an open source developer who is currently in the pre-beta testing stage with my main open-source application, one of the issues that come to mind is the issue with testing. It is fairly easy to write portable code (and fairly impossible to retroactively make non-portable code portable). The problem is testing.

In order to test a given program, the program has to be tested on any and all supported architechures and platforms for the program in question. This requires a large number of compters to perform testing on. Distro Watch has a large number of Linux distributions; it is not practical to test a program on all of them. What is done, usually, is for professional software vendors to say "This program is for RHEL 3; if you want to run it on any other distribution of Linux, we will not support it".

As just one example, after writing my application on RHEL 3 (OK, Centos 3.6), I couldn't get it to compile on FreeBSD because FreeBSD uses "-pthread" instead of "-lpthread" to indicate that an application uses the pthread libraries.

As another example, I went to some effort to have the application generate no warnings when compiled on GCC 3.2.3; however, the application generates a number of warnings when compiled with GCC 4.0.

As another example, the Loki games no longer run on Fedord Core 3; even though the people at Loki went to a lot of effort to make their games as portable as possible, things in Linux changed so that older binaries no longer run; I had to create special chroot() environments to run older binaries in FC3; I had a Slackware 8.1 and a RedHat6.2 chroot() environment for running older browsers for my cross-browser compatibility testing (something Slashdot hasn't done; The new "standards compliant" Slashdot breaks on a number of older browsers which rendered the old site just fine)

The point being that, while portable code minimizes the development expenses of an application, it does nothing to lower testing costs.

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Clarifying freedom 0, it includes the unambiguous statement,

The freedom to use a program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job, and without being required to communicate subsequently with the developer or any other specific entity.
[emphasis mine]

That clearly means technical portability, and also prohibits "DeActivation" features (phone home to decide whether to run) in any free product. But even if one ignores the portability requirement, "DeActivation" features of the operating system, for instance, revoke freedom 0 for anything running on that O/S. (Perhaps there is a loophole for editions of Windows that don't include DeActivation.) I am sure Richard Stallman has much more to say about this.

Robert Storey of DistroWatch paraphrased a speech by Stallman as follows:

Freedom Zero would seem to be a no-brainer. Even proprietary software allows you to run it as you like, right? Actually, not necessarily. More and more, we are seeing programs which - if you bother to read the fine print before you click on "I agree" - impose restrictions on the user. Windows XP, for example, insists on "product activation" which is tied to the hardware - change your motherboard, and it might stop working. Or consider Oracle, popular database software which is licensed "per processor" - buy one copy, install it on a dual-processor machine and you will be in violation of your licensing terms. There are other proprietary programs which expire after a certain date, or can only be run a limited number of times, or are deliberately crippled in some other way (you might as well call it "crippleware").
[emphasis mine]

Openz has a similar take:

The purpose of these protection mechanisms is ostensibly to minimise software 'piracy', but the reality is that it doesn't have any effect whatsoever on piracy and really an attempt to maximise revenue by restricting how people use the software.
[emphasis mine]

The opposite of freedom is restriction. It's not possible to run on Windows alone and claim freedom under GNU's definition. It's doubly impossible if you're talking about DeActivated Windows such as XP.

An Anonymous User has written about what this means in reality:

• Activation often has problems with some hardware and OS configurations. It is infuriating when something that does not affect the program itself prevents it from running because the stupid activation scheme cannot deal with it properly.
• Upgrading hardware and re-installs can easily become a nightmare when involving software requiring acti

the guide to securing Windows XP is actually a link to http://distrowatch.com/ so you can choose one of the many different options they have laid out for you.

And for everybody else who has better uses for their cash (like groceries):
http://www.linuxlookup.com/html/main/iso.html Get Linux.
http://www.linuxiso.org/ Get Linux.
http://distrowatch.com/ Get Linux (or BSD).
http://www.livingwithoutmicrosoft.org/ Learn more about alternatives.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/ Ask a Linux pro.
http://madpenguin.org/cms/ Read reviews of Linux.

So, in this case, you'd suggest a New Zealand-made distribution of Linux?

I stumbled across this liveCD two days ago on distrowatch and simply could not help downloading it, if only out of curiosity. I had thought LookingGlass to be defunct, but it seems theyre making quite some progress. The livecd is slax-popcorn based, boots in about two minutes with some (very) minimal hardware detection - though to be fair, it picked up on my video card and configured it for acceleration. When it loads into X, youre dropped into a plain ole minimal fluxbox desktop. At this point, I started poking around wondering when and where the Looking Glass would show up. But, never fear, its simply loading. Give it a little while and the java desktop will load in a window unto itself. Its a little cpu intensive, so you would benefit from a faster box with a decent amount of ram. The interface is rather slick..think aqua which has traded perfect eyecandy novel three-dimensional windowing (its still in development, so perfection is by no means expected - expect a few random lockups). If anyone does download and boot from it, I suggest clicking on the blue star at bottom right - it has information concerning the desktop's operation. At top left are three funky icons that are virtual desktops. The menu doesnt really work too well, but all things considered it does look pretty interesting. Window focussing and transparencies are rather well done as well. Concerning the innovative features and functions of the wm, you just have to see it; an explanation in text would not do it justice. The website is, of course, on its knees thanks to the slashdot deluge, but hopefully this little bit will help.

I was talking about the package system as a whole, not the tool nor the package format, excuse me if i wasn't clear. RPM (and RedHat, by extension) used to be notorious for circular dependencies issues. I suffered them myself, back in the RH7 days (7.2, to be precise), and even came across packages that simply wouldn't work at all, even if the dependencies were correctly installed.

    I moved to Debian for a while, and when Gentoo came out, settled for it. Never had a package installing issue ever since. But yes, i've heard RedHat got a lot better in that aspect... i'll surely try it when i get the chance!

They're on DistroWatch's front page.

Here's a link to their Ubunto section:

http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=02965#0

Since it wasn't clickable in the story, here is the distrowatch.com link.

Anti-whoring AC mode enabled for this post.

Actually, according to DistroWatch, the top ten distributions are:

1 Ubuntu 2724
2 Mandriva 1739
3 SUSE 1415
4 Fedora 1268
5 MEPIS 1115
6 KNOPPIX 931
7 Debian 888
8 Damn Small 679
9 Gentoo 612
10 Slackware 597

Perhaps my counting skilz are not as honed as yours. Really, though, DistroWatch visitors are notoriously fickle, and the rankings for the distributions in #2-4 usually depend on how long ago their last release was. Expect to see Mandriva's numbers soar shortly, and Fedora's to decline further, at least until FC5.

Actually by DistroWatch the big three in order are: Ubuntu, Mandriva and Fedora Core. I personally run FC3 on my laptop, but think I will switch to Mandriva once this goes public. I've been looking for some excuse to change and it has been a while since I ran Mandrake/Mandriva.

Actually by DistroWatch the big three in order are: Ubuntu, Mandriva and Fedora Core. I personally run FC3 on my laptop, but think I will switch to Mandriva once this goes public. I've been looking for some excuse to change and it has been a while since I ran Mandrake/Mandriva.

Dell offers Linux laptop in France
Features in the last RC
Reviews of 2005: Playreaction vnunet
Distrowatch

Just to point out that OpenBSD != Linux. Distrowatch only recently started tracking BSD and their FAQ explains

"Originally, the site covered Linux distributions only. However, after numerous requests from readers, BSDs and BSD-based projects were added to DistroWatch in May 2004. The reasoning behind this move was simple - Linux and BSDs have much in common - both are free and open source operating systems, and they both use many of the same open source packages available on the Internet. Best of all, the various BSD flavours are widely used and considered by many to be great operating systems."

Please lets not confuse people by using the trademarked word Linux to describe all free and open source OS'es.

Just to point out that OpenBSD != Linux. Distrowatch only recently started tracking BSD and their FAQ explains

"Originally, the site covered Linux distributions only. However, after numerous requests from readers, BSDs and BSD-based projects were added to DistroWatch in May 2004. The reasoning behind this move was simple - Linux and BSDs have much in common - both are free and open source operating systems, and they both use many of the same open source packages available on the Internet. Best of all, the various BSD flavours are widely used and considered by many to be great operating systems."

Please lets not confuse people by using the trademarked word Linux to describe all free and open source OS'es.

Do notice how he asks "any to add/remove?" at the end.... this takes it from "flamebait" to not so well informed. The best way would probably be to just take a look at the top 10 distros on DistroWatch.com

I still can't believe he left off both Ubuntu and Gentoo though...lol

When i went to Sun Microsystem's JavaOne conference in SF, all of the Linux JDS systems we're all running the 2.4 kernel, Gnome 2.2, Open Office 1.0, Mozilla 1.4 (no Firefox).... very old. According to DistroWatch, Sun hasn't done an update on JDS since 5-4-2004. How serious are they about JDS?

It appears that all the major Debian derived distros have joined this group (Mepis, Xandros, Linspire, Knoppix, Linspire, etc.) but not Ubuntu. Why not?

Slackware has 28 distros based on it (29 if you include the new PocketLinux), some of which are trying to be "Enterprise Level."