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Libranet allows adminmenu (screenshot), which makes it well suited for desktops because novice users can easily configure important settings such as Firewall, DNS & IP, manage device drivers, and configure/compile a kernel, through one simple interface similar to KDE's Control Center.

While kernel compiling and other more advanced functions may not be necessary for novice users, it allows people interested in learning more about GNU/Linux a springboard to access its deeper features and perhaps become more proficient with the OS & software.

IMHO, Linux could benefit from more tools such as this, not to hold the hands of people who have no business tweaking such features, but to allow users to "break the ice" with advanced Linux ditro features.

I hope that Adminmenu or YAST could be easily integrated into other distros, as long as these tools don't cry when users want to start tweaking settings from the commandline (then again YAST has a complete curses implementation, which allows you to use the same tool for remote administration as local administration through GUI, neat).

Libranet allows adminmenu (screenshot), which makes it well suited for desktops because novice users can easily configure important settings such as Firewall, DNS & IP, manage device drivers, and configure/compile a kernel, through one simple interface similar to KDE's Control Center.

While kernel compiling and other more advanced functions may not be necessary for novice users, it allows people interested in learning more about GNU/Linux a springboard to access its deeper features and perhaps become more proficient with the OS & software.

IMHO, Linux could benefit from more tools such as this, not to hold the hands of people who have no business tweaking such features, but to allow users to "break the ice" with advanced Linux ditro features.

I hope that Adminmenu or YAST could be easily integrated into other distros, as long as these tools don't cry when users want to start tweaking settings from the commandline (then again YAST has a complete curses implementation, which allows you to use the same tool for remote administration as local administration through GUI, neat).

Because unfortunatelly and for the embarrasment of the Linux community. Suse is hardly seen as a distro with good customer support.

However many Linux users are more than willing to spend their free time to help you out migrate.

First thing buy a few cheap Live-CDs to find out which distro picks up the wifi.
Check the wifi itself is OK.

There one of many online shops that sells cheap Linux CDs - like OSDisc.com
They cost about few dollars each.
Make sure you include a few classic Live CDs such as:

* Knoppix
* Kanotix
* Slax
* Mandriva - old name Mandrake (know to be good at hardware detection)

Check out forums:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/

Check out a Linux User group near you:
http://www.linux.org/groups/

If you end up liking Mandriva, their support is better and for a small subscription fee you can join their "Club" to get help.

Commercial distros such as Xandros specially and Linspire are known to have very excellent customer support. But I've never had direct experience this is what I keep hearing.

For Debian systems Libranet is known to have very good customer support also.

If all this is confusing, just make a list of what you need and I will try my best to help you out.

Debian Woody is all fine and dandy, but the best Debian desktop "release" so far is Ubuntu. Libranet isn't bad either, but if you want a powerful libre Linux desktop, try Ubuntu.

And if you didn't figure it out already, Ubuntu is based on Debian.

I installed Ubuntu and was pleasantly surprised with how simple the installation was. All my hardware was recognized and X was easily set up. However, Ubuntu is a rather small distribution in reality, and therefore it does lack some rather important packages that some might find essential: KDE and Wine were the most prominent of those I noticed.

For those looking for a debian-based distribution that is powerful and easy to set up, AND has virtually all the packages one needs, check out Libranet. It is the perfect distribution that is sutable for all types of linux users, both experienced and not. It can serve as the perfect development environment, and also act as your primary desktop system (if that is, you refuse to get OS X).

The installation is both simple and powerful, allowing automatic detection of virtually all hardware (even your mouse!), it even installed hard accelerated drivers for my nVidia card.

I'm not sure, but it seems to be a sort of diamond-in-the-rough since very few people I know of have heard of it. After installing multiple linux distro's including Gentoo, Mandrake, Debian, and Ubuntu, I've decided that Libranet is by far the best debian-based distro out there.

I'll wait for Libranet 3.0, thanks.

Libranet kicks major buttocks and is as reliable as any such project can be.

I agree it's actually an honest review from his standpoint. Amazingly there's one journalist that isn't a complete moron, which has obviously become a requirement so they don't mind writing to the median IQ.

Kudos on the Opteron + Gentoo. Is the -O2 optimization making any appreciable difference in execution, or will programs need to be written to abuse the phat address?

Quick heads up on an easy install: Libranet 2.8.1 is offering that download free for a while. 'Found correct wireless logitech kbd + wheel mouse through linksys kvm, all drivers for via mini-itx, correctly identified/setup old sony trinitron multiscan e100 monitor, and an HP Desk Jet 600C. No other distro has come close, and I've installed 13 of 'em now (DamnSmallLinux came close, but you'd expect that from a Knoppix knock off).

Heh, for ease of installation on a Debian based distro, get Libranet

Why don't you try installing a Debian-based distro with a decent installer? Like, say Libranet. The installer and XAdminmenu will get you up and running with a nice Debian desktop system.

And, Libranet 2.8 now has a straightforward upgrade from their 2.4.18 kernel to the 2.4.23 kernel. Instructions here .

For several years I had run SuSE and Red Hat and had wanted to try Debian, but didn't have enough knowledge to get it installed.

Then, just over a year ago, I learned about Libranet and ordered a copy. Libranet is a distribution that is true to Debian, while providing a cutting edge desktop, slick install and a great administrative interface.

I have found Libranet to be exceptionally stable and you just can't beat Debian for its package management.

Gentoo definitely is only for the experienced. I appreciate that it's possible to taylor it to one's liking, but to do this one should first know what one's liking is, or what is possible. If you want a distro to combine the good things of Debian (vast array of packages, tremendous package management) with commercial distros (easy, very new software), may I suggest Libranet or Xandros

Or you can always try out libranet. Basically its debian with a super easy installer. I tried debian once, but couldn't for the life of me get it to recognize my ethernet card while also loading the 2,4 kernel (for some reason they still have 2.2 as the default kernel, which just wasn't going to cut it. I am not going to re-write all of my iptables rules to work for ipchains). After giving up with the basic debian installer, I discovered libranet, which still has all of the glory of debian's apt-get, but with an installer that is just as easy if not slightly more easy than RedHat's installer. It instantly recognized all of my hardware, and everything is now working gloriously.

... And that attitude and/or belief is exactly why Linux will ultimately fail.

Like it or not, people need money to survive. Free spirit is one thing, but keeping something entirely free as in beer will ultimately kill it as the people behind it will have nothing to support their continued existence.

I dislike Microsoft as much as the next guy, but I realize that if I want viable alternatives, I have, or at least should, pay for them to show my support and to put food in the developers' mouths. That's why I buy every new version of Libranet Linux, and that's why I have a subscription to FreeBSD releases on CD via the FreeBSD Mall.

Libranet is another Debian that "just works".

The article claims that since Debian's technical advantages can (and to some extent have been) be "borrowed" by other distributions, and since Joe User doesn't care about the policy advantages of Debian, then Debian is doomed to be marginalized as the Linux market grows with unprecidented numbers of Joe Users. I strongly disagree.

Debian has always had a strong following with Systems Administrators who want a strong, stable, supportable platform for their GNU/Linux based services that can be centrally administered without waisting a lot of time. The same forces will make Debian significant as a corporate desktop. This is a huge market, and while Joe User might be on some of those computers, he's not the one making the decision.

Red Hat wins its share of this market through marketing, Debian wins its share through precisely the same policy superiority that the author discounts. Sure, Joe User doesn't understand the policy advantages, but Joe User doesn't play in this field. Sure, Red Hat and other corporate marketted distros will mean Debian will probably never even get a majority share of this field, as long as there are systems people who are allowed to make systems decisions, Debian will be a player here.

The other two markets are Small/Home Businesses, and Home Users. These are the fields Joe User plays. And no, he's not necessarily likely to gravitate towards Debian (actually, from my experience he is, but all my evidence is anecdotal, and it's irrelevant for my point). What the author misses is a key differentiation distros that borrow from Debian.

Some distros, like the example of Red Hat borrowing apt-rpm/apt-cacher, are alien distros borrowing a tool that was developed by Debian. While they probably will contribute to development of the tool, these don't do much for Debian as a whole.

Other distros are derivative of Debian. They put their own installation and look and feel, do their own marketing and often usability testing. They might not even mention their relation to Debian, but, at their core, they're Debian, and developers developing for these Distros are directly helping Debian development. Some significant distros in this category are: LindowsOS, Progeny and Libranet. They're not Red Hat, but they're growing, and growing strong.

I feel Debian's chances of being marginalized are slim.

I went to libranet site to see download options.
The Downloads are not free!!. This is certainly a first from a linux distro. I doubt i will pay to download isos!!

From what I read, Libranet created a Linux distro for their own purposes, decided it was good enough for public consumption, and decided to profit from it.

If you want antialiasing, then read this page. Not everybody likes antialiasing, so it makes sense to disable it and provide a howto for those who want it.

Easy installation

Text based installer guides you through setting up your system

They run kernel 2.4.20, and hava their download page here
Doesnt look like a free download though.
Moreover it doesnt look like they even run their own repository from this comment in their forums (scroll down a bit).
Looks like a Debian with slightly newer packages and for which you have to pay.

Now, this is not to say there's anything wrong with trying to make money from Linux. However, it's truly unfortunate that there's no way to check out this distro without shelling out some money. RedHat lets you download for free, as do all the other major distros. However, they'll also take your money if you want the box version or if you want support. Libranet can't seriously hope people will shell out money to switch to this without being given a risk-free chance to experience it.

And, since they basically took Debian, modified it, and made it not-free as in beer, I'm wondering why they just got free publicity on Slashdot.

Now, admittedly I'm not a KDE user so this might be something that KDE imposes rather than Libranet, but even so is it really necessary to have three submenus for this?

Cheers,
Ian

Yeah, Debian rocks. But if you need an easy install with easy admin tools, try Libranet, which does a value-added package of Debian..

You probably don't want to hear this, but have you tried Libranet? It's Debian-based, so you absolutely will not run in to those dependancy problems (unless you WANT to, which some of us actually do) but it's made for personal, desktop use, so it autodetects everything. I actually was most dissapointed after I found that my accumulated "How to get the fucking PPP connection working" knowledge, which I acquired from Red Hat, turned out to be totally useless under Libranet as the first time I booted I could hit "connect" and get online. Libranet (2.0 and later) uses grub, so no cylinder limit applies. Libranet's default kernel comes with most things anybody will need compiled as modules; I only recompile because I'm keen on playing "Let's break the system" and not out of any functional need.

Yes, it's true that on Linux you will spend a lot of time looking up/figuring out how to do what's easily point-and-clickable in those other OSs. I use Linux as my only OS, and it can be frusterating saying "I know this is possible, if I could only find what the hell it's called so I can at least do a google on the right keyword" and similar. I'm not defending Linux's shortcomings here (I'll do it next time, if you like) all I'm saying is your experiences are probably atypical.

(Why yes, this was a "Change your distribution" solution. Can I help it that all non-Debian distros are so fragile in the way they're put together that any attempt to touch them causes them to shatter?)

Presumably, Libranet, Xandros Desktop, and the PGI installer image for Debian 3.0. All of those are drool-proof ways to get onto Debian 3.0 i386, providing preconfigured access to many of the desired "desktop" tchotchkes. The first two even prepackage the most-requested proprietary stuff (Acrocrap, Macromedia Flash, MS Core TrueType fonts, etc.).

Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com

I hate how *every* opportunity to point out the merits of their distro is taken swiftly. We all know gentoo is cool.

True, but you should really give libranet a try. It's like a softer, friendlier Debian.

Yes, Libranet 2.7 is based on Debian Woody (3.0). This is mentioned on the features page.

- Tal

I also noticed that.
But it was easly solved with the "About Libranet" button on their main page..

(If I just copy/paste'd this about page I would certainly get an "Informative" moderation point.. :)

Ah, I finally reinstalled Linux on my home machine because my dial-up connection under Win2K started acting funny. How funny? Well, just about any webpage related to Sympatico (my ISP) no longer loads. That's right. Slashdot will load fine once I'm connected, but www.sympatico.ca (my ISP's homepage) does not. Reading Sympatico POP mail? Impossible.

Tech support's answer? Reinstall Netscape. Fine. That didn't work. Next answer? Remove and reinstall the TCP/IP module. Tried that. Twice.

My answer: install Libranet Debian Linux. It's a little prettier than stock Debian. Reading email and connecting to the ISP homepage via the same dialup number and modem is NO LONGER A PROBLEM.

So what was the problem? I have no idea. Windows 2000 choked on itself. Now we only reboot to Win2k for my fiancee to use Word, Excel and to book tickets on the Air Canada website.

I loved Progeny, but since it died, I'm using Libranet now. It's not free-as-in-beer to download the binaries, but the $45 I paid was well worth it for a great debian-based distro that has been rock-solid for me. You can download version 1.9 for free from their site, but the latest version costs money.

Installing Libranet 2.0 was quite painless, other than having to swap two CDs several times, and then having 400MB of stuff to update via apt-get. Thank god I just upgraded my cable modem to the business-class service...

But, since the Libranet guys aren't too keen on giving away the binaries of version 2.0 (though you can download version 1.9 for free) I doubt they'd be too interested in contributing their installer technology...

This Debian distro seems to be growing rapidly in popularity. Good installer and thoroughly equipped with GUI-based administration tools.

The only complaint I have is that the CD does not boot with a SCSI-capable kernel.

Actually, I put my mouth-money into Libranet this week, it was only $45, and it's debian-based, and so far I'm very happy with it.

I just hope they stay around longer than the Stormix, Progeny, and Corel debian-based distros did. But, since you can only get Libranet 2.0 by paying for it, hopefully they'll keep a strong revenue base.

So, I think you should say that only 4000 Mandrake users put their money where their mouth is, some of us are supporting other distributions. :)

You can download Libranet 1.9.1. If you installed and liked that version, then it would follow that you would like the new and improved version as well.

Brandon Tallent.

For non RPM systems see Libranet and Gentoo Linux

There is a group of people who are attempting to put some pressure on hardware manufacturers in that time honored tradition, a petition. The petition is short, to the point, and does not throw insults. There is also a way to add hardware manufacturers to the list of potential recipients.

GNU/Linux distribution companies spend large amounts of time and money in putting together their distributions. Sure there are volunteer organizations putting together distributions and of course anyone can download the pieces and assemble one themselves. For the vast majority of computer users this is not a viable option. The amount of expertise needed to successfully install and run these is beyond their resources. Less than 25% of computer users have fast enough internet connections to make downloading a large CD image possible. We at Libranet produce and support what is perhaps the best GNU/linux distribution ever, and we spend long hours and much effort in doing so. Also we think it unfair that only those users with fast connections can download free CD images. We provide a free download of our previous release, which is still a first class product. Regarding charging for a download and whether this is in conformity with the GNU General Public License, it is. We have consulted with Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation and have been assured that what we are doing is legitimate. Richard put it this way: "Free software is about freedom, not price. Free software means that users have certain freedoms, such as the freedom to redistribute and change the software. To charge for a copy is legitimate; this is just as true for downloading as for a CD-ROM." We think this policy levels the playing field for all, and rewards us for our work. We hope you will try libranet and we wish you happy computing. -- The libranet team

For those who want user-friendly slashdot posts, here is a link to Libranet's site: http://www.libranet.com/

I realy, realy don't understand all this fuss.

Until today I had never heard of this "libranet" distribution and yet we have people crawling all over slashdot claiming this is the best linux distribution.

Come on guys, the company doesn't even support it's own distribution: ftp://ftp.libranet.com/pub/updates

--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?

So, I wrote Sorenson, and their response to me was that they couldn't do anything because of their agreement with Apple, and suggested that I talk to Apple about it. I tried to do that and the only response I received back from Apple was that it was a Sorenson issue and that I should take it up with Sorenson.

Ah yes, the 1990's - the time when corporations believed that "customer service" meant just passing the concern onto someone else.

I for one will be very happy to see something positive from this petition. However I am disheartened that another petition to encourage greater support for hardware drivers (esp. printers) under Linux seems to be short of its goal!

Linux has made it this far without anything as extravagent as Codewarrior.

There's still large factions that say that the CLI is superior to the GUI.

There are hundreds of free alternative to Code Warrior.

It seems understandable for a company to doubt how much impact their product will have on a hugely saturated market.

They're aiming for 2 million signatures, which is a bit high, but if a significant number of people actually take the time to sign this petition then there is a greater chance that hardware companies will take note. If you've ever written an inflamatory note about some hardware company not releasing drivers for Linux, this is your chance to cast your vote.

It only takes a minute and it won't hurt a bit.

The petition link is broken, or at least the evil proxy I'm sitting behind doesn't like it.

Fixed link here.

Anthony

I can't get a connection to them. They are probably drowning by now.

As of right now (4pm GMT, 11am EST) i managed to actually register on the petition.

Suffice to say, the total number right now is just short of 2000. Considering the difficulty it took in actually getting in to register, the server must be oversubscribed several times over with people trying to register! however many of these are obviously being lost - 2000 in (approximately?) 4 hours the article's been live on /. implies 500 registrations per hour, or just under 10 a minute. there is a severe bottleneck in there somewhere, probably the server being a very slow machine unable to cope with running multiple instances of perl, at a guess.

if someone is in a position to mirror this, on a more powerful machine, with more bandwidth, this could help bring in the signatures, striking while the iron is hot and all that.

for anyone willing to do so, i urge you to contact libranet about it - webmaster@libranet.com seems to be their only contact on this, though petition@libranet.com may also work, though i am by no means sure.

Fross

It should be http://www.libranet.com/petition.html.

http://www.libranet.com/petition.html

http://www.libranet.com/petition.html

numb

Yes, I agree. Linux is a desktop too. Linux by Libranet is a desktop and a server and it's a snap to install. (Got support also).