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The selection bias on Distrowatch is known to be skewed toward new users of a distribution. It's only on that basis that Mint has pulled ahead. There's a giant installed base of Ubuntu systems that don't appear in their data. Check out the zenwalk analysis to read about the sort of trends that Distrowatch is actually useful for.

It's been my experience that Slackware and its derivatives are far and away stabler and faster than Debian... If you want one that's particularly nice, IMO, try out Zenwalk.

But people will continue to use what's easy, and what's familiar. That's about the only reason I can see for Ubuntu's continued popularity... people use it because it's what they're familiar with, and because the learning curve isn't as steep as it is for some other distributions. Compared to Windows, it's far stabler and faster. When they're ready, they'll try something else, and realize that, for desktop use, switching from Ubuntu to something like Gentoo or Slackware will feel like it did when you switched from Windows to Ubuntu.

The desktop enviornment is only part of the story. Ubuntu (and all its derivitives) still launch loads of daemons. I've tried Xubuntu on old pentium 3 machines. It's pretty bad. Then I tried ZenWalk, an XFCE distro that is actually designed for old machines and it ran heaps better.

ZenWalk unfortunatly is slackware based (and I personally can't stand slackware) so I ended up not using it anyway. But it ran well. In the end I just switched back to Arch which is great for any machine. That's what I use on my primary desktop too.

"Slackware with a XFCE and Firefox/OpenOffice" = Zenwalk. Easier than Slackware itself; comes with a few extra tools. http://www.zenwalk.org/

It's called Zenwalk

I'll be trying this at home today :)

It's called Zenwalk

Does their marketting team have anything to do with their success?

Certainly. In my mind, Zenwalk is, hands-down, a better distro. Faster, lighter, equally compatible, large library of pre-built software, easy to maintain. Running Zenwalk makes Ubuntu feel like Windows... it really *is* that much zippier. And there's probably other distros that are of the same calibre, but I simply haven't felt any need or desire to go looking.

But Zenwalk doesn't have nearly as large a marketting weight, nor does it have the collection of fanbois touting how great it is to anybody who doesn't tell them to fuck off. As a result, an overrated distro is the big dog in town, while a better product is underappreciated. *shrugs* all things come to an end, eventually. Something will eventually topple Ubuntu, and something else will eventually topple that.

Try Zenwalk. The only time I've had to go into CLI since installing it was to install the NVidia proprietary drivers. And that was personal preference... there's actually a package in the repository for it.

Just about all of the important configuration options are available through the ZenPanel, and UI tweaks through XFCE's panel. And it supports XFCE's desktop compositor, of shiny video effects/transparency/etc. Unlike Compiz/Fusion (at least, the last time I used it), XFCE's compositor will use OpenGL (and the transparency effect on Terminal is a perfect example of how an accelerated desktop/transparency *should* work), but will allow you to run OpenGL programs/games without slowing down, too. I've tested it with TuxRacer, as well as with SecondLife, the latter being notorious for not working properly....

http://www.zenwalk.org/

You still have the problem with guaranteeing compatibility with commercially available software. There's Wine, or if you're more comfortable paying for something that comes with tech. support, there's Crossover and Cedega. Crossover comes with a reasonable guarantee that most of the important office software will work, though it's not compatible with Office 2007 yet.

Oh, and if you want a more user-oriented Slackware spin-off I recommend Zenwalk with a one-app-per-task philosophy, slackware core, netpkg and xfce desktop. And great nationalization/localization too.

//end commercial

Don't forget Zenwalk!

It's a very nice well polished distro.

This got modded Funny, but it brings up a valid point. Isn't this "story" just talking about having something like, oh I don't know, GRUB installed and then a lightweight Linux distro (like Xubuntu, DSL-N, or Zenwalk)? It just seems like they're describing something that's neither news, nor particularly unique. Hell, the article even states that this "Splashtop" is based on Linux.

You could try a different distro. I prefer Zenwalk... http://www.zenwalk.org/

But really, without knowing what network card you have, I can't help. I do know that with Zenwalk, every network driver is compiled as a module and can be enabled manually if it isn't detected.

Perhaps your problem is with Ubuntu and not with Linux.

Yeah, but that's very *very* distro-specific.

Slackware-based distros, for example, use runlevel 4 for X instead of RL 5. They also have *all* init scripts in /etc/rc.d, and the scripts are started on basis of whether they're executable. Anything runlevel-specific, like login managers and X servers are then loaded from /etc/rc.d/rcX.S where X is the runlevel.

that's to say nothing of distros that aren't even using SysV init, like the current version of Ubuntu and anything BSD-based.

It was pretty obvious that the author hasn't done his research, and that it's a pretty poor attempt at explaining stuff. I was rather hoping for an article where the author would actually parse the output of dmesg and explain, line for line, what everything meant. That would actually be informative. Instead, he gave information that was specific to RedHat Linux, a lot of which doesn't apply to other distros. I wouldn't even be complaining so much, except that he didn't even bother to write it specific to the most popular Linux distro. RedHat was the most popular when I started with Linux, over a decade ago. These days, that crown belongs to Ubuntu. If you're going to write something distro-specific, at least write it for the most popular one.

Obligatory disclaimer: The last version of RedHat that I used was RedHat 6.0. When 7.0 came out, I switched to Slackware. I now use Zenwalk (slack-based, formerly MiniSlack, http://www.zenwalk.org/), having switched at Zenwalk 2.4. I have tried other distros, including Ubuntu, and still prefer Slackware-based distributions, and I find that the Zenwalk community and package management tools are the best of that breed.

I learned of jwm from Puppy Linux. Pretty light on features (like, no way to edit the menus from the GUI), but simple, light, and it looks and acts much like Windows.

For Linux distros that aren't crippled for the sake of minimalism, I've been using Zenwalk Linux. Zenwalk is one of the mainstream distros that still fits on one CD, and keeps the cheating (downloading of crucial features after supposedly finishing an install) to a minimum. Vector Linux is supposed to be light, but it takes 2G when installed-- too much for an old laptop. Zenwalk is lighter. I looked at KateOS briefly. They have a page on why Kate is better than Vector, but didn't have some things I was looking for, so didn't try it. And I had been using Slackware (that's where I put jwm), but have given up on it.

Your not the only one i to switched away from Slackware on my desktop, but i didn't stray far. I now run (Slackware based)Zenwalk Linux (formerly Minislack) with Zeqadious's lightweight gnome packages.

Even with Slackware no longer on hiatus i have stuck with Zenwalk because of its package management (dependency resolution), active development team and lightweight no boat design philosophy.

However i do still run Slackware 10.1 and 11 on my two test servers, and will most likely keep using it as my server distro for years to come.

Keep up the good work Patrick, you make one of the best Linux distributions around (IMO).

wget is patient... :)

Linux: It's Not Just For Computer Geeks Anymore

By Carl Lumma | May 2007

You might think there's no way a free operating system written by volunteers could compete when it comes to music production. But in the past couple of years, all the tools you need to make music have arrived on Linux.

For years, Linux has enjoyed market leadership as a server operating system -- Google's servers run it, for starters -- while struggling with the stigma that it isn't polished enough for desktop use. Those days are over, and word is getting out. Linux is quickly becoming the OS you'd set up for your grandmother, with no fuss over activation, software updates, or viruses. Unlike any version of Windows or Mac OS, Linux is open-source. What does this mean to musicians? For starters, there are no company secrets to keep or non-disclosure agreements to sign, so software developers and users alike can get on the same page very quickly, speeding the flow of bug fixes and feature additions.

Linux demands more nuts-and-bolts computer knowledge for pro audio than for web browsing, but if you've ever tried to troubleshoot a latency or driver issue on a store-bought laptop, you're probably still listening. If you upgrade your hard drive, you won't have to reactivate all your apps due to the hardware change, and when you discover a cool tool or workflow, you can share it with friends without them shelling out hundreds of dollars or resorting to piracy. With the exception of Linux versions that include commercial tech support, most everything in the Linux world is free for the asking, Many developers accept voluntary donations, which we encourage you to make.

HOW IS IT DONE?

Let's look over the shoulder of Aaron Krister-Johnson, the keyboardist and choir director at Temple Sholom in Chicago. He also composes incidental music for local theater, and is half of the electronica duo Divide by Pi, Keyboard's June '04 unsigned artist of the month. The core of his home studio is a PC running Linux (see Figure 1).

To obtain Linux, you download a particular distribution or "distro," which is a particular version of Linux someone put together, for free or a donation. Some distros are available boxed at very low cost. Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com) is popular for home-computer tasks, but Aaron uses Zenwalk (www.zenwalk.org). Software compiled for a particular distro will only run on that distro, so most come with several free applications that you can install along with the basic OS. We recommend Fedora (www.fedoraproject.org), because you can then install the Planet CCRMA package (ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software), which includes just about every Linux audio application in existence.

Speaking of music applications, the most popular DAW for Linux is Ardour, and Aaron also uses JACK (see "You Don't Know JACK?" below), a soft synth called ZynSubAddFx, and an arpeggiator he wrote called Pymidichaos. Some distros come with binaries -- apps that have been compiled, i.e. converted from the programming language the developers used to the ones and zeroes computers understand at their innermost level. Three such distros are meant to provide install-and-go solutions for Linux-curious musicians: Studio to Go (www.ferventsoftware.com), Musix (www.musix.org.ar/en) and 64Studio (www.64studio.com).

But sooner or later (most likely sooner), you're going to have to take some groovy, free program you've downloaded and compile it yourself. This is where musicians used to commercial software might get scared off. Fear not, and remember that all the actual pr

You might also consider Zenwalk linux http://www.zenwalk.org/ which comes with lightweight Xfce desktop environment and latest versions of popular apps.

I think, to be honest, that all that was really shown is that popular modern Linux desktop distributions are targetted at modern hardware, and as a result don't run as well on older hardware. They ran Red Hat and Mandrake and Novell etc. 'out of the box' with no customisation to make it fit with the hardware - unsurprisingly the default install of such distros a targetted at modern systems and have hefty system requirements.

Pick up a distribution that actually claims to target older hardware, or just generally fit in smaller places, like say Damn Small Linux, Feather Linux or Zenwalk and I suspect you'll find much better performance and much lower system requirements all 'out of the box'. The counter-claim seems to be that Windows CE, with the right customisations, will run on older hardware too. Does anyone know if their is a release of CE set up for desktop use on older hardwre?

Jedidiah.