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
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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).
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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.)
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
(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.
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
Hey, if you're running Slackware, it's your job to download XFree86 4.0.2 and the 4.0.3 "upgrade" from ftp.xfree86.org and install it yourself in place of the XFree86 3.3.6 included with Slackware 7.1.
I'm doing some Slackware 7.1 installs on non-personal systems right now, and it's like a 10 minute job at most. If that sort of thing is above your head, perhaps you should be trying an rpm-based distribution instead of Slackware, just to make things a little easier for you! No sense in beating your head against a wall and there's no shame in being not quite ready for Slackware yet.
Better yet, just give it a try. Download all of the files in the XFree86 4.0.2 distribution for i386 Linux Glibc 2.1 and read and follow the "Install" file, which will tell you how to proceed to install XFree86 4.0.2. Then, re-visit the XFree86 repository and grab the update to 4.0.3 and install it in similar fashion.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
There's a pretty complete Linux distribution list here.
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.