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Why do you cheer about this! Do you ENJOY pain? I installed $lackware on my machine and it was torture! My computer was weezing and crying that i installed a Operating System worse than windows! It has no proper packge management, you just unzip tgzes and hope for the best. It has a half assed text based setup tool and and only supports the obsolete and unreliable ext/2 file systems. You have to edit at least 2000 text files to get the damn thing working and it only supports systems made before 1993!

HINT : Go and buy yourself a real distrobution or download a real one

All those companies mentioned don't give free ISO's just like RedHat

I don't know what would lead you to believe this. All four vendors named in the article, among many others, have downloadable ISO images available (see, for example LinuxISO). Granted, the commercial CDs often contain many more goodies than the free (as in beer) versions, but at least one can get an indication of what each distribution has to offer prior to making a purchase.

I patched this hole on all my boxes a long time ago. It's really easy too. I have to warn you, though, the patch is really quite large. About a CD's worth. There are also different versions depending on what your needs are. Go here to download the fix now. Have fun, and happy computing!

Are you helpless? Just try linuxiso.org (slow!) or just Google for linux iso. Better yet, try the Debian "netinst" CD (a 30 meg iso that installs most of the remaining parts of itself over the 'net) and avoid all the unnecessary downloading. Poke around Debian.org and you'll find a link to it.

There's a patch available for that.

You obviously haven't looked in the directory which contains the woody install disk images, because it's plain as day. The instructions for finding this and a description of what it's about are in the "Installing Debian/GNU Linux 3.0 (woody) for i386" guide that IS linked to from the woody webpages, which are linked from an obvious place on www.debian.org. Here is the direct URL since you're so dumb: http://www.debian.org/releases/woody/i386/install. en.txt

Here is the url to take you directly to the bootable 2.4 disk images.
http://http.us.debian.org/dists/woody/main/disks-i 386/current/bf2.4/

ISO images for woody aren't provided yet since the package list is currently changing; however, the instructions on the debian CD site and the scripts there will make you an ISO of this unrelased software easily. If that's not enough for you you can try some premade images from a source like http://www.linuxiso.org/debian.html Hell, there's even DVD images floating around. You can buy a preburned one here: http://www.linux-cd.com/store/cgi/store.cgi?client =14491123&action=serve&item=woody.html

Premade ISO's won't be available for woody until it is released. "Official" ISO's are available for previous relases from the official site at http://www.debian.org/CD/. Minimal images designed to replace a set of boot floppies, "netinst" cd's, are also linked to from that site at http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/

I find it ironic that you seem to be capable of writing a novella about how inept you are at reading. You seem to know exactly what you want, but since www.debian.org doesn't show it to you in big bold letters on the front of the page, why you didn't click on the search button is entirely beyond my comprehension.

I will give to one of your points: that the default installer can be improved. For the woody release, it was decided "if it ain't broke don't fix it." The next release will contain a better one. If you really can't wait, make a woody netinst cd with the Progeny installer. Or can you not type "apt-get install pgi" successfully? Someone will probably make one of these available with the progeny installer after woody's release.

Think you can put together a better debian website? Why don't you sign up?

bug ridden (take a look at their yup, update program for example, core software for the distro and it doesn't work right), difficult to install and very poor support is more like it. take a look at the ydl mailing list for lots of complaints. in addition the company has a pretty lousy policy of releasing iso images months after it's available in stores (to get people to buy it). i miss linuxppc, that was a good distro. fortunately debian, suse and mandrake are available.

posted anonymously so i don't get my butt sued .

Somebody should tell Glenn A. Baker that some copright holders like that kind of copying. They have as many moral and legal rights as he does, he is very inconsiderate.

http://www.openmusicregistry.org/

http://www.fsf.org/

true story.

Try www.linuxiso.org if you are looking to leech an ISO of the 8.2beta and finding the official mirror sites a bit packed for your taste. I'm only getting 46KB/sec, but at least you can connect, unlike the ftp mirror sites.

Now for older boxen ... the best way to make them efficient is to follow the Keep It Simple Silly method of making a working box. Win95-Lite was made for this exact reason ... but that's just if you want win95 ... For linux I would have to recommend Slackware or Debian ... after a base install you have very little bloat and very few apps that you won't need. Apt makes it real nice to find and install, but slack also has a decent package list to choose from.

You may also want to look into the BSD's ... all of them have a very bland base install and all of them run the latest greatest stuff.

Along with being so great all of these (except slack) offer net installs, so all you need is a disk drive to boot the things up ... so if the CD has crapped out (which it has on many old computers) you can still do a full install on the net.

People are saying FVWM or other things like that ... SawFish and BlackBox were made to be VERY lightweight window managers and like windowmaker are very customizable and since they are so small ... they take up a very small memory foot print.

The thing would also make a cool Home Server, Make it into a router, webserver, email server, and file server ... perfect ...

Lastly ... you could set it up with a VNC client and use it that way as a terminal system. I think the one thing that needs to be realized is that old boxes are far from useless.

LinuxISO has ISO images of many linux distros, including SuSE 7.1

On June 29th, FreeBSD Services Ltd. announced release of a bootable DVD containing FreeBSD. You can buy the 9GB DVD at http://www.freebsd-services.com/. There has also been some discussion of selling a FreeBSD DVD at FreeBSD Mall. A Japan retailer is offering NetBSD on DVD. When will OpenBSD follow? I expect there will be difficulties, as Theo copyrighted the CD layout - that's why you won't find it on Linuxiso.org. That's too bad, as an OpenBSD DVD would be quite convenient.

www.linuxiso.org ISO images of install CDs for various distributions
www.linuxnewbies.org A good start in Linux
www.linuxdoc.org The Linux Documentation Project


As for writing your own drivers, you probably won't need to do that... unless you have something really specialized or something you purchased on Mars. If the drivers for the device didn't come with whatever distribution you choose, you can probably find somewhere on the web where someone else needed to use that same device under Linux and has already written a driver for it (which you can just download and install).

Finally, for your first time in Linux you might want to go out and buy distribution CDs rather than download. This gets you three benefits: No waiting for your 56k modem to disconnect you 498 megs into the download (I think this must be part of Murphy's law), dead tree manuals (You can probably find everything you need online, but there is something comforting about documentation that you can still get to even if you mess up the computer), and support (many distributions have tech support offerings).

Have fun and good luck!

Wow, 1.5 GB a day! My ISP limits me to 4 GB/month, and I've yet to exceed that, even on 640K DSL. That's partly because I only download ISOs in my university department's computer lab, where I have access to a CD burner. One day I downloaded all 6 ISOs of the Debian distro from linuxiso.org. It was around 3 am though.

A Comparative Review of 5 Linux Distributions

I just don't get Suse, the company. Their YAST and YAST2 programs are under their own, non-GPL license. I believe the distribution as a whole is under a funny license as well. They refuse to release installation iso's for 7.0 or 7.1 for x86. If you frequent LinuxIso.org you know what I'm talking about. But Suse released "live evaluation" iso's of 7.0 and 7.1. You can install Suse from ftp. You can even download installation iso's for every other arcitechture that they support. But not for x86. It just baffles me.

Linux Central just recently added a Suse 7.0 disc to their Linux Cental CD-Roms selection. But not 7.1. I know I could roll my own and stuff, but the new Redhat, Conectiva, and Debian beckon to come and try them out as well. Rather waste my time messing with getting Linux From Scratch working, than trying to get Suse installed.

I know. The patent answer is "It's business, stupid", but that argument doesn't make much sense when *all* of your competition is offering 'free samples', but you're not. As a dumb American, what's the reason for going with Suse instead of Redhat or Mandrake, or even Storm or Progeny? I just don't get it.

One other thing, if anyone can help me. One of the most annoying things right now for me is the lack of good fonts in web pages under Konq. Do the boxed distros include fonts that aren't included in the download versions? I haven't bought a boxed distro in almost six months and it's about time to get one. I'll definately get one sooner than later if I can get some better fonts.

And finally, I feel the need to pimp some of the very cool distros I've come across. I've haven't been able to try these out yet (doh. got to get a cd burner.) but they do look cool. First, Caldera has released a beta for their upcoming 3.1 workstation release. Their is a review of it at Linux Planet. The coolest transistion distro I've found is Redmond Linux. Tries to focus on the destop and do away with the need for the command line. There is also Demudi. The Debian Multimedia Distribution. The name says it all. Then there's a few of the more hardcore, hacker type distros: Rock Linux, Stampede Linux, and Linux From Scratch. And last, but not least. The most vaporous of them all. Microsoft Linux.

I just don't get Suse, the company. Their YAST and YAST2 programs are under their own, non-GPL license. I believe the distribution as a whole is under a funny license as well. They refuse to release installation iso's for 7.0 or 7.1 for x86. If you frequent LinuxIso.org you know what I'm talking about. But Suse released "live evaluation" iso's of 7.0 and 7.1. You can install Suse from ftp. You can even download installation iso's for every other arcitechture that they support. But not for x86. It just baffles me.

Linux Central just recently added a Suse 7.0 disc to their Linux Cental CD-Roms selection. But not 7.1. I know I could roll my own and stuff, but the new Redhat, Conectiva, and Debian beckon to come and try them out as well. Rather waste my time messing with getting Linux From Scratch working, than trying to get Suse installed.

I know. The patent answer is "It's business, stupid", but that argument doesn't make much sense when *all* of your competition is offering 'free samples', but you're not. As a dumb American, what's the reason for going with Suse instead of Redhat or Mandrake, or even Storm or Progeny? I just don't get it.

One other thing, if anyone can help me. One of the most annoying things right now for me is the lack of good fonts in web pages under Konq. Do the boxed distros include fonts that aren't included in the download versions? I haven't bought a boxed distro in almost six months and it's about time to get one. I'll definately get one sooner than later if I can get some better fonts.

And finally, I feel the need to pimp some of the very cool distros I've come across. I've haven't been able to try these out yet (doh. got to get a cd burner.) but they do look cool. First, Caldera has released a beta for their upcoming 3.1 workstation release. Their is a review of it at Linux Planet. The coolest transistion distro I've found is Redmond Linux. Tries to focus on the destop and do away with the need for the command line. There is also Demudi. The Debian Multimedia Distribution. The name says it all. Then there's a few of the more hardcore, hacker type distros: Rock Linux, Stampede Linux, and Linux From Scratch. And last, but not least. The most vaporous of them all. Microsoft Linux.

I realize this is a bit late in the game for this thread, but why don't you try SuSE?

I've been very happy with their Intel distro, and have used their sparc distro for some time now, as well.

the ISO's are available at www.linuxiso.org; it's 5 CD's (3 with binaries and 2 with source).

SuSE will eventually revert to selling it as a boxed set only, possibly with a single-cd "evaluation" edition, like with their Intel ports, but hey, get the 5-cd set while the getting's good!

I realize this is a bit late in the game for this thread, but why don't you try SuSE?

I've been very happy with their Intel distro, and have used their sparc distro for some time now, as well.

the ISO's are available at www.linuxiso.org; it's 5 CD's (3 with binaries and 2 with source).

SuSE will eventually revert to selling it as a boxed set only, possibly with a single-cd "evaluation" edition, like with their Intel ports, but hey, get the 5-cd set while the getting's good!

A complete set of SuSE cds for the sparc availible for download here... user friendly too

This is my favorite desktop Linux flavor. I still prefer OpenBSD for the firewalling, and Slackware for the servers, but Mandrake is my favorite desktop flavor.

Is this pretty much the way everyone feels, or are people more dedicated to a particular distribution?

Don't forget to check http://www.linuxiso.org...

Jethro

Well, ah, what the fuck are you talking about? Are you talking about installing over Cable? Not sure I could do that with my DSL, but I don't really care to. I just want to actually be able to surf the net and download the occasional .rpm or .tar.gz. I haven't been able to do that under Red Hat 7.0. I was wondering if there was going to be an easier way to setup the connection with Red Hat 7.1.

As for Suse, they haven't broken the GPL as far as I know. But they are acting like a traditional proprietary software company with the non-release of installation iso's of 7.0 and 7.1 and letting the cat out of the bag that the Suse Linux OS and their setup software, YAST, is not under any free software license, but under their own Suse-YAST license. Part of it says that you can't copy and freely redistribute copies of Suse Linux or their YAST setup software. You have to get permission from Suse to do that. I had never heard this until the recent release of 7.1. If you want to read about it check out the news section at LinuxISO.org. It was news to me and completely turned me off to Suse. While this may not contradict the letter of the GPL, in my mind it contradicts the spirit of the GPL, and I don't agree with it.

On a side note, I find it funny that people bash Red Hat, when, as far as I know, all the software they make is under a free software license. Yet, Suse can away with crap like this without anyone saying a thing.

I have noticed that it seems like it's taking longer for Red Hat to produce releases. I have been a faithful Red Hat user for over three years now. I have purchased several releases while I could have donwloaded them, but decided against it as I wanted to put money into the Linux community. I have tried other distros, but have always come back because I like the way Red Hat does certain things etc. It seems like Red Hat is kind of falling behind e.g. Suse has had 2.4.x along with a journaling file system for some time now. I was actually considering trying the new Suse out but decided against it because of their corporate policy. I was going to download it and if it did what I needed I was honestly going to buy it however, after I saw their attitude I decided against it.See 3/27 So here I am waiting for 7.1 to be released. What is the hold up for Red Hat 7.1 ? Why does it seem like it is taking longer between releases ? I have tried many JFS systems, but what journaling file system do you think will be the future standard for the Red Hat distro?

No suddenly I have bunches of people who want to use the personal private lines for their business without paying the businnes rates.

A lot has happened in the past few days! We're making the most of the "2000" part of the product's name. ;-)

As has been noted on here, the LinuxPPC 2000 Q4 ISO images are now available. Look on our FTP mirror list or on LinuxISO.org.

The CD-ROM set (FWB HDT*PE, install, extras, and source) is now available for pre-order. Shipping is scheduled to begin on January 10.

We have changed our subscription policy and lowered the prices on Myth II and Applixware Office.

And, www.linuxppc.ne.jp has gone live. Look for the announcement about the Japanese version of LinuxPPC 2000 Q4 on there.

That's it. Whew! :-D

Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.

Just look at our FTP mirrors. It's also on LinuxISO.org.

Also, the Macworld Expo is in less than two weeks.

It's not just hype. Please reserve your cynicism. :-)

Haaz: Co-founder, LinuxPPC Inc., making Linux for PowerPC since 1996.

It hasn't been too long for me to remember what it was like. My First first installation of Linux was Red Hat 5.2 and after getting it installed and going through the painful process of setting up X manually, I gave up on it because all I could get was a gray screen with a little "x" on it. In retrospect, I know what the problem was and it was something simple. But at the time it was too frustrating and I ended up putting Win95 back on that box for a while. (My next attempt was much more sucessful. Thank you SuSE!) But the point is, there is little in the way of DESKTOP support for linux. Especially for those of us who choose to download linux, and therefore give up any support that a vendor might provide.

I installed LinuxPPC 2000 a month or so ago on a PowerPC 7200/90. The computer booted off the CD (obtained from linuxiso.org), installed, and then ran just fine. The boot loader lets you choose to boot either Mac OS (7.5 in my case) or LinuxPPC. Simply pressing TAB stops the count-down timer to stop automatic booting.

Two differences between my installation and yours: I installed on a second drive rather than on the same drive as Mac OS. Second, I have old world roms rather than new world roms.

No problems to date; rock solid distro.

Check out LinuxISO. You'll find the ISO's of all the major distros there. They are good about updating also.

www.linuxiso.org has a 2.2 (frozen) iso =)

And you can get debian 2.2 on cd. So I dont see why debian was missing Linuxiso.org has them.

http://www.linuxiso.org

There you go. No reason to take time out of your busy day to write prose extolling the virtues of Linux.

I was one of those someones, but I didn't think to post my reply here. You addressed pretty much the same points I did, except this one:

All the tools you need to build your own ISO is included in OpenBSD, anybody can make them. Yet nobody does. Think about that.

Actually, one company has, and charges $4.99 for it.

They instituted it due to popular demand.

If enough people wanted a cheap version on CD that they were willing to pay for it in sufficient quantities to make it economical for CheapBytes to pay to burn thousands of copies, how can anyone say there's no demand for the ISO image?

I guarantee you, if they provided an official free ISO, it'd be a major download on LinuxISO.org the day it made it to their site.

The other thing I addressed is *WHY* people want this thing in the first place.

One, as you said, is the download factor; you know you've got the whole thing if the ISO you downloaded is the same size on your HD as it is on the FTP site.

Another is, installing for somebody else, such as at an installfest at your local LUG. Whether you install it from floppies, from an FTP or NFS server, or even just by copying hard drives with Ghost or dd, it's still good to be able to hand the person a CD he can use to reinstall or fix or update or etc. later, when he doesn't have that high-speed connection available.

Another is, snaring people at events. If you can slap a disk in their hand, that's pretty cool. They're more likely to try it than if you just give them a card with http://www.openbsd.org on it.

Another is, businesses. I don't want to have to rely on the availability of another system for my install in some circumstances. In others, when I do use another system to power my install, I still don't want to be stuck *HAVING* to rely on it.

Another is, books and magazines. It's a lot easier for SysAdmin, or even Linux Journal, to justify including a CD if they don't have to burn the damn thing themselves.

McGraw Hill is publishing a series of Unix books right now that include CDs related to the various topics, such as Steve Maxwell's Unix Network Management Tools and the twice-as-long Red Hat Linux Network Managment Tools. Wouldn't you like to see something like "OpenBSD Network Management Tools"?

Or the inclusion of a CD with Building Linux and OpenBSD Firewalls?

Or the inclusion of OpenBSD instead of FreeBSD in some other book?

I would. Anybody who wants to see OpenBSD get used by more people should, too.

But leaving aside completely the question of an official ISO, they're accidentally (it appears) giving the impression that they're against that, when they claim to not be against it at all.

Look at this quote from the FAQ at LinuxISO.org's site:

4/26/00 - Lots of questions again about OpenBSD. Here is a link to OpenBSD's FAQ talking about ISO images. I feel it is a good idea to respect their wishes as the good folks there have given us a great OS. - billy

See, he interprets this (link to OpenBSD FAQ entry) to mean that they are opposed to people doing this.

They could fix this as simply as adding the following: "If you do create one, feel free to distribute it."

Or better, follow the above with: "If you do, and you're on a stable site that will be there for the long haul such as http://www.linuxiso.org or http://www.sourceforge.net, let us know and we'll link you in this FAQ."

That is, if those are their true intentions. But I see a lot the same old elitist attitude here. Their attitude seems to be: (this is not a quote, this is the impression I get)

"If people choose to misunderstand our FAQ, then that's their problem, not ours."

In reality, anyone who does computer support of any kind (which is what a FAQ is) can tell you:

If it isn't obvious to the reader/user, it isn't obvious.

Just change the FAQ, dudes. If that's too much work, let me know and I'll provide you with the new wording, guaranteed to make it clear that:

1) You encourage people to make ISOs available.
2) You don't do so yourself merely because you don't see the need.
3) You encourage people to buy from you if possible in order to support the project.

--

I was one of those someones, but I didn't think to post my reply here. You addressed pretty much the same points I did, except this one:

All the tools you need to build your own ISO is included in OpenBSD, anybody can make them. Yet nobody does. Think about that.

Actually, one company has, and charges $4.99 for it.

They instituted it due to popular demand.

If enough people wanted a cheap version on CD that they were willing to pay for it in sufficient quantities to make it economical for CheapBytes to pay to burn thousands of copies, how can anyone say there's no demand for the ISO image?

I guarantee you, if they provided an official free ISO, it'd be a major download on LinuxISO.org the day it made it to their site.

The other thing I addressed is *WHY* people want this thing in the first place.

One, as you said, is the download factor; you know you've got the whole thing if the ISO you downloaded is the same size on your HD as it is on the FTP site.

Another is, installing for somebody else, such as at an installfest at your local LUG. Whether you install it from floppies, from an FTP or NFS server, or even just by copying hard drives with Ghost or dd, it's still good to be able to hand the person a CD he can use to reinstall or fix or update or etc. later, when he doesn't have that high-speed connection available.

Another is, snaring people at events. If you can slap a disk in their hand, that's pretty cool. They're more likely to try it than if you just give them a card with http://www.openbsd.org on it.

Another is, businesses. I don't want to have to rely on the availability of another system for my install in some circumstances. In others, when I do use another system to power my install, I still don't want to be stuck *HAVING* to rely on it.

Another is, books and magazines. It's a lot easier for SysAdmin, or even Linux Journal, to justify including a CD if they don't have to burn the damn thing themselves.

McGraw Hill is publishing a series of Unix books right now that include CDs related to the various topics, such as Steve Maxwell's Unix Network Management Tools and the twice-as-long Red Hat Linux Network Managment Tools. Wouldn't you like to see something like "OpenBSD Network Management Tools"?

Or the inclusion of a CD with Building Linux and OpenBSD Firewalls?

Or the inclusion of OpenBSD instead of FreeBSD in some other book?

I would. Anybody who wants to see OpenBSD get used by more people should, too.

But leaving aside completely the question of an official ISO, they're accidentally (it appears) giving the impression that they're against that, when they claim to not be against it at all.

Look at this quote from the FAQ at LinuxISO.org's site:

4/26/00 - Lots of questions again about OpenBSD. Here is a link to OpenBSD's FAQ talking about ISO images. I feel it is a good idea to respect their wishes as the good folks there have given us a great OS. - billy

See, he interprets this (link to OpenBSD FAQ entry) to mean that they are opposed to people doing this.

They could fix this as simply as adding the following: "If you do create one, feel free to distribute it."

Or better, follow the above with: "If you do, and you're on a stable site that will be there for the long haul such as http://www.linuxiso.org or http://www.sourceforge.net, let us know and we'll link you in this FAQ."

That is, if those are their true intentions. But I see a lot the same old elitist attitude here. Their attitude seems to be: (this is not a quote, this is the impression I get)

"If people choose to misunderstand our FAQ, then that's their problem, not ours."

In reality, anyone who does computer support of any kind (which is what a FAQ is) can tell you:

If it isn't obvious to the reader/user, it isn't obvious.

Just change the FAQ, dudes. If that's too much work, let me know and I'll provide you with the new wording, guaranteed to make it clear that:

1) You encourage people to make ISOs available.
2) You don't do so yourself merely because you don't see the need.
3) You encourage people to buy from you if possible in order to support the project.

--

The file layout of the OpenBSD CD is copyrighted by Theo (the creator/packager of the OS) which makes copying, downloading and burning the CD illegal. This allows the group to support the project. If you really want it you gotta pay for it.

Actually, this isn't entirely correct.

The layout of their official CD is indeed copyright, and indeed proprietary and closed and just generally anti-open.

However, there is nothing stopping you from downloading the files, making your own ISO, and doing anything at all that you please with it.

They just don't make that very clear in their FAQ.

It's no wonder it's confusing. I'm trying to convince one of them (privately, I will not name names, except to say it's not Theo) to either change the FAQ, or let me change it. We'll see what happens.

I'm not confused, but lots of folks are. See the FAQ at LinuxISO.org for a perfect example; billy thinks it's the OpenBSD team's wishes that you don't create ISOs and distribute them, but that's neither my understanding from a careful reading of the OpenBSD FAQ, nor is it the view of the person with whom I'm corresponding.

It's just an unfortunate side effect of an elitist attitude that isn't at all uncommon in this segment of our industry.

It's the same attitude you see in the various arguments against improved Linux GUIs, user-friendly distributions, etc.

--