Slashdot Mirror
Linux Distribution Round-Up
Patrick Mullen writes: "The Duke of URL has just posted a Distribution Round-Up. The article covers information on many of today's (and yesterday's) popular Linux distributions as well as links to many distribution reviews -- and aims to arm Linux users with the information to choose the distro that is right for them." It's pretty much required that Slashdot publish one of these every few months.
I notice that Vine Linux is conspicuously missing. Vine is probably the most popular Linux Distro in Japan.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Interesting article. Odd, though, that half the distributions mentioned are also noted to be dead projects.
Perhaps one of WinLinux's biggest features is that it was the first partitionless versions of Linux.
Hmm, I remember using doslinux long before WinLinux was ever around. Since it ran on top of umsdos, no partitioning was needed. I believe Slackware also supported umsdos (and possibly does still? dunno, I don't use it any more...).
Mandrake's GUI enhancements often require more memory than a stock Linux distribution, often requiring 32 MB just for their DrakX graphical installer.
Yet there's no mention of RedHat 7.1's ftp installer, which won't run on my system with 48 megs of RAM. I don't know how much it needs, but that's absurd. (Note that the NFS install works just fine with 48 megs).
They mention KDE 2.0 Beta and GNOME 1.2, I'm positive that most distributions ship with more recent versions of these desktop environments. How old is this article anyway? (couldn't find a date on it so soon)
In addition to this, they are Brazilian, meaning this distribution supports quite a few South American languages as well as the standard US/English.
And that is quite an acomplishment, considering the fact that only two major western languages are spoken in South America, Portuguese and Spanish.
Also, last time I checked Connectiva, support for Tupi-Guarani, Ancient Inca and Traditional Ianomani was still lacking.
is this really news for nerds? don't you think it's possible that most of the slashdot readership just might already know this?
now i know the slashdot editors may still get excited when a mainstream media outlet mentions linux. but i got over it about three years ago.
---
The article mentions Kondara MNU/Linux, but contains two errors:
1) It says that is a GNU project.
Kondara has never been, and never will be, a GNU project. It is created by a group of volunteers and packaged by a commercial enterprise, Digital Factory. (Some people consider DF to be a bunch of VC losers, but that depends on who you ask.)
2) It says that Kondara appears dead.
A new version is currently at beta2, scheduled for release in the next month or two.
With errors like these, one has to wonder just how well the writer did his research.
This is a small part of why I dislike proprietary installers. It hints at the problems that could develop. With the current SuSE you at least could, in principle, install the entire thing without using their installer, but this doesn't have to be a permanent condition. I once bought a SuSE distribution. I don't really regret it, but I sure don't like proprietary installers.
Anything which could become a chokepoint needs to be widened or branched around. Design to avoid centralized positions of control.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That's why they say YMMV.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I installed Slackware 7.1 a couple of days ago, but Xfree 4.0 is not included in this distro. I also did not find any reference to Xfree 4.0 in info about SW 7.1 on the SW website. I hope Xfree 4.x is included in SW 7.2 when it comes out, though.
-- Cheers!
Right there with you.. though I wish I could say I've only built upon my original SLS system.... there just isn't enough time in the day to do that.
9600 bps connections using TERM and mosaic-term to surf the web for the first time.
How retro.
And when you build a house, I suppose you run out to the woods with an axe and cut your own wood. Or perhaps you fabricate your own nails.
Building a Linux system from scratch is by all means time consuming. If you have time to do it that way, congratulations.
There is a book called Linux From Scratch that gives instructions for building a complete linux system from source code. The instructions are good enough that you don't have to be an expert to follow them. I would highly recommend this "distribution" to anyone wanting a completely customized linux system.
You have to start from a pre-existing distribution. To solve this problem, some LFS users have made bootable CD's containg a complete LFS system which can be used as a base to compile from.
Well CPU speed and memory sizes may have taken away a lot of the challenge, but you can still choose to work on fundamentally hard problems like image recognition and AI.
Sorry - rather, Progeny isn't in the category lists. It hasn't been classified as simple, intermediate or advanced, and it didn't receive a review as the remainder of the distributions did.
Progeny isn't in the list. Progeny is a commercial distribution by Ian Murdock, based on the Debian distribution. It has a graphical installer that's even simpler than those of the distributions in the beginner level, and a rapidly evolving set of support options. All of this while maintaining Debian's trump card of apt.
While most slashdot readers probably already know this, I think that this could be helpful when trying to orient people when you are trying to introduce linux in an organization. Once old-timer IS people see how well it works within our larger network services infrastructure, they are always asking about all of the different distros and which one they should be trying. This type of overview is good to have around to give to those people.
I was hoping to get a nice review of Progeny Debian, which (although it's a 1.0 release, so there's some bugs) I think is pretty slick, and it's totally Debian-compatible (you can apt-get from one to the other).
------
SLS Linux? It's the de-facto standard of linux dists worldwide. Yeah.
I started out with SLS--I had forgotten the meaning of the acronym--around 0.94 or so mark. Maybe it was 0.99.14. It was such a long time (Internet time) ago. Actually, I had tried Linux much earlier (v0.77?), but its shell was not up to much (ash). Besides, I was just starting out with Unix.
:( Too many binaries had been affected to even attempt repair.
I also upgraded that sucker while mostly following Debian and Slackware for file system structure. I did it all the way up to Linux 2.2.12.
Eventually, my system became unstable. It was probably due to a bad compiler. You know. The one compiled with bad memory.
Since then I have switched over to FreeBSD. I no longer have the time nor inclination to worry about glibc incompatibilities or where the files went. Now I have more time for development as opposed to solid administration.
Before anyone complains, I do realize a Linux distribution would have solved this, but I picked FreeBSD due to several more criteria I was looking at (i.e., extensive man pages, standard file system layout, libc and kernel sync, and central repository using CVS).
What do people typically do for desktops with FreeBSD - can you run KDE or GNOME?
Both will run on FreeBSD. Personally, I run Enlightenment v0.16.5.
Yes it is on the list, second paragraph, right before debian.
Look what he says about Slackware 7.1:
"At the release of 7.1, not only does Slackware include XFree86 4.0, but also KDE 2.0 (beta), Kernel 2.4 (test), and Perl 5.6. While none of the other options will cause much of a problem (as they are in the unstable tree), Perl 5.6 causes some big problems. Still, this is just one problem, and unless you actually run Perl, this won't affect you."
Which is false. Slack 7.1 uses 2.2.17, XF 3.3.6, KDE 1.1.2. Anly the Perl part is close to accurate. But Perl 5.6 works creat at running Kuro5hin, so you have to wender. If at least two distro parts were way off base, who's to say they're all not wrong in same way (which I naturally would not know since I'm reading the article to familiarize myself with them!).
(Note: yeah, some of the stuff he mentioned is in contrib, but they are not reallf useable packages -- LinuxMafia has better packages.)
--
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
He was WAY off on the Slackware stuff. I noticed that right off.
That's just plain bad reporting. It appeared to be a decent article, but with so many mistakes (and very obvious mistakes), I don't think I can trust any of the info about distros I don't already know about.
The only thing that guy has going for him is the catchy domain name and handle.
Stand on the shoulders of a correct configuration and move on from there.
e-smith is also good if you want to help move MS out of the server-farm room, as well.
My 2 cents... ;-)
Key phrase: I've been using slackware for 7 years. Try using Mandrake or Debian for seven years -- without using Slackware at all -- and *then* try to install Slackware again. See which is easier for you.
--
Karma: Terrifying (mostly affected by atrocities you've committed)
This article seems to focus a little too much on the bundled software with a distribution. While this may be a little useful for some, things like kernel version included aren't that useful - anyone can go and download the newest version. It would have been better focused around the types of package installations, and system scripts and tools IMHO. +PEte
Score:-1, Funny
Rock Linux, Green Tree Linux, and Linux From Scratch are not on the list. I can only assume from the brief discriptions of each distro that this list is mostly for people who have no idea what they realy want and those 3 are a little beond even "Advanced" in that most of them require you to compile a kernel befor you can even install the OS. But no list whould be compleat with out them.
Ascii artist &
I know most of the navigation in the installer could be done by keyboard, but it was a bit slow: moving up/down to another package on a list had an annoying delay while the description text appeared. Dunno if this had to do with the framebuffer X or something else. On a text mode menu you would very quickly scroll around with up/down keys and press space to [un]select a package.
But hey, no distro is perfect and Mandrake 8.0 is the best I've used so far.
--
I hit the karma cap, now do I gain enlightenment?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
(Although I do use Slackware for my basic source of everything...I originally used SLS [SoftLanding System - remember them? 1993/1994 in Victoria Canada...one of the first distributions around])
Bah! Distributions! Bah!
Thomas Dzubin
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
why the hell does everyone think slackware is so damn advanced of a linux distribution? I've been using slackware for 7 years, I believe that is since slack 2.0, and I never thought slackware as being difficult to handle in any way. The installation is easier than anyone's goofy GUI installs. I tried installing mandrake once because I had a CD, it was such a pain in the ass, I downloaded the slackware tree and stuck it on one of my partitions. debian was the same way, the installation sucked.
Spring is here. Don't believe me, look outside!
Mandrake also is the most bleeding edge distro, which often uses beta and release candidate drivers and even some pre-release software. I had many problems with mandrake starting with 7.1 and 7.2 was practically unusable on my system. I believe mandrake is doing quite a dis-service to the linux community.
After Windows users start seeing Linux-mandrake crash and lock up they are going to think poorly on Linux and go back to Windows. I am not paraniod or prejiduce agaisn't mandrke but I am just telling you what I experienced and seen with it. Look at all the anti-linux posts at zdnet and here and you will relise all the users or %90 use Mandrake. Mandrake is the SCO Xenix of the linux community.
http://saveie6.com/
The source is there. You just need to buy it. :-)
THey have a right to show their share holders that they can protect their intellectual property. What they are doing is perfectly legal under the GPL. ITs free as in speech but not beer. Alot of work went into developing SuSE and the GPL says you only need to give away the source if your selling it or tying it. They are doing this. If you pay you have the source.
Also caldera is very proprietary. THey do release the soure to the linux related software but everything else is closed soruce and Ransom Love stated that he did not like the gpl. Caldera is alot more anti-gpl then SuSE.
http://saveie6.com/
Conspicuously missing in this round-up are Caldera's eDesktop and eServer (i.e. OpenLinux) products, which are excellent Linux distributions. Caldera has been a fairly large contributor to the Linux world (NetWare support, the original version of RPM way back in the day, the GPLed graphical installer Lizard, their GPLed administration tool, COAS [compare to S.u.S.E.'s YaST, which is still proprietary...])
They also have a lot of big-name corporate deals involving Linux, a commercial version of embedded Linux (Lineo), and the code and customer list for SCO now. They were the first to ship with KDE as a graphical desktop (I believe with KDE Beta-3, before even KDE 1.0) and one of the first to ship with a full desktop of any kind (with Looking Glass, way back when). I think Caldera has always put out great distributions.
I use eDesktop 2.4 right now. I chose it after comparing it to a number of others. I have basically upgraded my distribution (not a fun task) after each generation of libraries -- first when the switch from a.out to elf was made (libc4 to libc5) and then when the switch from the linux-hacked GNU libc to the standard GNU libc was made (libc5 to libc6). My first distribution (a.out) was Slackware, but for both upgrades since then I've tried out a number of distributions, and both times I've ended up choosing Caldera's distributions over the likes of Red Hat and Debian. Why? The LISA tool (which you can choose instead of Lizard if you want) gives me Slackware-like flexibility during install, and once in, the compiler and library configurations always seem to compile more free source code "out of the box" without frustration, which is a big deal to me.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Man, Mosaic with TERM was the coolest thing... I basically soiled myself the first time I launched Mosaic with TERM and was able to load up InterLinks (which I used a lot then) at home. (I was only affording 2400 bps at that particular moment... Those 'The Cure' fan pages took forever to load)
I clung to Mosiac for the longest time... I nearly cried when they said that 2.7b5 [IIRC] would be the final release and that development was stopping. Then I went looking around at others, like Chimera and Mmosaic... I hated Netscape. *sigh*
I miss the days when the "amazing" factor was so high in Linux and computing in general. These days, we can do anything, so anything we do is mundane.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I wouldn't put Mandrake as a beginner distribution. I would rather put it as one of the most advanced distribution available to all...
can anyone point me to something like this for other architectures? i run all ppc at home, and a friend of mine is looking at getting an alpha... a fairly complete comparison like this would be a godsend.
--saint----
Not all that familiar with some of the Distro's mentioned above, but I'm not a Distro reviewer. I do write for the Duke of URL though. Toss me or Patrick the names of those Distro's; and we'll try to remedy the ones you folks feel are missing.
-Steven
http://www.thedukeofurl.org
- --- If there is anything more important then my ego around, I want it caught and shot.
RPM stands for Red Hat Package Manager, so I guess that explains it all.
IP was invented for the sake of lawsuits.
There's a pretty complete Linux distribution list here.
Yeah. That's the "it's business" argument. Like I said, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense in this context. Look at the facts: You can install it via ftp; You can download installation iso's for every other architecture that Suse supports; All the other major distros allow you to download iso's, as well as install via ftp. So, I'm asking, why doesn't Suse provide installation iso's?
I don't think I said it wasn't legal. The GPL also deals with distribution, though. As in, you can freely redistribute the work or derivative works, with the only stipulation being that the source code also has to be included as well. You cannot redistribute Suse the distro, or YAST, without permission from Suse the company. They have not been released under the GPL. They've been released under a different license. They're the only things Suse does that aren't released under the GPL. Why?
And so what if Caldera is not in favor of the GPL? How are they proprietary? Ransom Love said that he *was* in favor of BSD-style licensing. I was under the impression that everything will still be open source, just not GPL. We were talking about Suse, not Caldera anyway.
Caldera releases stuff under the GPL. Caldera the company may not be in favor of the GPL, but Caldera the Linux distro company doesn't have any problems with it. Caldera is trying to become a Unix software company, with Linux thrown in for good measure. As far as I know, all of Caldera Linux is under the GPL. And anyway, Caldera isn't abandoning the GPL. All their stuff will be open source and I'm sure their Linux distro will remain GPL.
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.
It is nice to see Storm Linux finally get some credit. I believe the duke was right when he said they probably could have secured financial security if they had come into the scene 8 months before a tech slump. Storm did what Progeny is trying to do (1.5 yrs ago). Its a great way to get into debian
Elbows out...
I realise that alot of people here dislike the "newbie" distros but if any of them can bring Linux to the mainstream it's Mandrake. I used to be a big RedHat believer but we've seen what's happened with them.
-
-------------------------------------------------
My sig of choice is Marlboro
i used SunOS at work for 3 years before i tried Debian, so i already had some idea of what a *nix could do, and some experienced systems admins to ask for advice.
i've done RedHat, and been very hard pressed to get it to do what i wanted. i've tried Dragon Linux for fun, too. they work, but they do not have good package management, and when something new comes out i'm hard-pressed to upgrade anything.
apt-get and dselect are Debians true masterpieces.
yes, Debian is conservative. i laude the package maintainers for their work in testing before release. if Debian cost money, i'd pay it gladly. i'm glad it doesn't.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Just because someone has a different opinion doesn't mean that it is wrong. I happen to be a big proponent of the GPL. I am not however a huge fan of Linux. It's just one of the Kernels of the GNU operating system. No more no less.
Linux is neat but it's not a religion.
Kde works great and Gnome especially so. In fact, check out this Slashdot story http://slashdot.org/bsd/01/03/26/2010217.shtml. FreeBSD is now an offcial Gnome platform.