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Conectiva Linux 7.0 Review
Patrick Mullen writes: "The Duke of URL has posted their review of Conectiva Linux 7.0. Conectiva Linux was the first distribution to support APT-RPM, which cures most of the ails of typical RPMs. Their latest release even bundles a graphical front-end to APT, and brings the worlds of Debian and Red Hat together."
Yar, First post maties
Has anyone got any first hand reviews? I used to use redhat as my Newbie distribution, and after the latest tricks in 7.2 I need to find a new one for the fresh converts and install fests. Is this a good choice for newbies? or should I stick with Mandrake.
Thanks
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I think that Synaptic is the best APT frontend.
Im waiting the port of Synaptic to Debian.
Conectiva Linux was the first distribution to support APT-RPM
I would've though there'd be some sort of matter/antimatter explosion when apt and rpm came together judging by the flamewars I've seen....
I went to the Conectiva website to download the ISO but the front page only provides two language options...spanish and portugese. Are there english mirrors? Maybe an alternate place to download?
this apt vs rpm vs tar.gz vs etc. isn't getting linux anyware. Fortunately, Gentoo Linux seems to be on the right track with their Portage package management system...
Here is a blurb from their website (http://www.gentoo.org/):
"Gentoo Linux is a versatile and fast, completely free x86-based Linux distribution geared towards developers and network professionals. Unlike other distros, Gentoo Linux has an advanced package management system called Portage. Portage is a true ports system in the tradition of BSD ports, but is Python-based and sports a number of advanced features including dependencies, fine-grained package management, "fake" (OpenBSD-style) installs, safe unmerging, system profiles, virtual packages, config file management, and more."
The urpmi tool coming with mandrake is well.. ownage =). Works like apt-get for me in the rpm world.
urpmi is the frontend to rpmdrake =).
It just works =). The nr. 1 reason i use mandrake (the second is cooker).
However i'll always welcome another tool, as long they can live side by side =).
still reading?
I have a big download to do to test out the distro for myself because whats good for the goose is not always good for the gander. Such as Linux from scatch to a Linux Newbie coming from Mac OS 9. Sometimes it just sucks
Like other major distributions, the brazilian Connectiva employs many people closely related to Linux development.
Marcelo Tosatti was recently announced as the new head mantainer over the 2.4 stable kernel tree. Rik Van Riel is known for his work in the memory management subsystem and Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo works with IPX.
The point here is not to praise Connectiva (or Red Hat or anyone), but to notice that it is perfectly possible to run a profitable company and care for the development community at the
same time.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
While the reviewer is right that apt is a wonderful tool, he is guilty of two very common mistakes:
- apt is not the package manager per se. It is a front end to the package manager. Therefore the whole idea of using it with another package manager as its default (dpkg) is not so unlikely as it sounds. In fact, as far as I can make out from my Debian documentation, apt is specifically designed to be agnostic in regards to what package manager does the actual work.
- The previous was only a minor quibble. His major mistake is however his assertion that you can download any
.rpm and have apt sort out the dependencies. Guess what? It doesn't work that way. In order for apt to work, it needs a central repository that provides it with a correct dependency list. Without that, you're back to the good old dependency hell. This is what makes Connectiva and Debian great, because that is exactly what they provide, and it is only because they do that that apt is such a great tool
Mart (a happy Debian user)"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Let's look at the numbers...
aw shit.
man urpmi
How many applications is bundled with this distribution ? ;-)
If there are less than 7000 programs you shouldn't buy it
From the article:
A limitation of RPM is the lack of ability to fetch and install dependencies that are needed when installing a given package. It can be frustrating to try and install some software only to be held back by unmet dependencies. This usually leads to time-loss as one has to track down these dependencies, install them, and then install the package you wanted to install in the first place.
I've been using redhat - at least on some test machines not involved directly in the network - since 4.1. While rpm is far from perfect, it's also not that bad as the article implies: you can search for the missing dependencies here -- note that you have to check "Provided Packages", then download those packages from your favourite mirror.
Well actually, I deal with helping people on a few irc channels for linux problems. the biggest problem occurs with RPMs. Sure they may be newbies but they can install an rpm, and yet they install something else that requires it and it doesnt detect it on some occasions. This is not something id look at as not that bad. I prefer source myself but the .tgz works great for me, never had a problem once with it. As for bringing the world of Redhat and Debian together, why taint a good dist with redhat? I personaly dont like apt, but i like rpm even less, and then making a GUI for it? come on people. the more we step away from the console the lazier we get, the more vulnerable we get, and i dont want to say this cus a few friends use a lot of GUI but the dumber we get. Why do you need a gui for something so simple? And this brings up the question does it require X? if so im already sold on ANYthing else. a frontend is one thing. and what about the whole rpm version incompatability thing? you dont see this with tgz. I really dont want to upgrade to a new pkgtool or installpkg/upgradepkg to move on to slack 8.1. Am I just a lunatic user/admin gone anti-gui because of m$ or do other people share my views?
every dark cloud has a silver lining, but lightning kills hundreds of people every year trying to find it.
Here is the easiest way I have found to deal with an RPM that refuses to install due to a lack of dependencies:
rpm -i --nodeps --noscripts X.rpm
This fixes RPM everytime. (Even if you do something silly like upgrade glibc on redhat 6.2, only to discover that you had better downgrade REALLY fast...)
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
They didn't mention the fact that CL 7.0 comes with a lot of packages fragmentation.
By "package fragmentation" I mean splitting XFree, Gnome, KDE, glibc and all other big software in a lot of small packages, keeping the compatibility with other distros and with the old CLs.
Example:
Number of packages
Software CL 6.0 --> CL 7.0
glibc 03 --> 65
XFree86 34 --> 79
kde 60 --> 276
gnome 32 --> 66
koffice 01 --> 19
linuxconf 56 --> 70
-devel 127 --> 373
rpm 03 --> 05
This is very useful when installing the distro in a machine with little disk space and specially when doing a remote upgrade (you don't have to download big packages with functionalities that you don't use).
A complete article: "Fragmentation of Packages on Conectiva Linux 7.0" can be found here, but it's in Brazilian Portuguese (I'm sorry).
- Ademar
"Unfortunately, no-one can be told what Linux is.. you must see it for yourself."
Keep an eye on these guys. Marcelo Tosatti, the new kernel 2.4 maintainer, works at Conectiva, and that's another reason to believe they're doing a serious job there.
...talk about rpm dependencies hell! There were 3 screens of dependencies on a RH7.1 machine. I could see it being like that on an older distro but not a new one. I decided I didnt want the new kde that bad.
I am seriously considering switching to debian. As I learn more about linux I see redhat failing to meet my needs/wants more and more.
I read the review for this, and it sounds pretty ho-hum. The conclusion states that it's fast and stable...well, it's running the same software as all the other 10,000 distros out there. What is it that makes it particularly fast and stable by comparison?
The other thing that really bothers me is that this sounds like it has virtually the same features as all the other big names: Graphical install, easy to set up...except it gives too many goddamned options! I would like to see a distro that is a coherent whole, not a mishmash of every possible choice. I mean, it gives a choice between 2.2 and 2.4 kernels! There is not a non-geek in this world who knows or cares what that means. Nor do they care whether is runs KDE or GNOME. It ought to customize one or the other to be the Connectiva desktop, thus making a product that's unique to them, perhaps adding to the KDE control panel the ability to configure everything on the system in one place. Instead they give you a choice of three desktops!
Does the world need another distribution that caters only to geeks?
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You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
Here is a thread that discusses apt and rpm.
e .p hp?thold=0&mode=thread&order=2&sid=248
http://www.debianplanet.org/debianplanet/articl
Is it just me, or is this review incredibly low on actual information?
"Well, uh, it detected my hardware fine and then everything worked. The end."
I suppose this does say something about how idiot-proof the typical Linux distro has become, but there sure doesn't seem to be a whole lot of meat here.
--saint
Also, contrary to popular opinion, 2.4 ain't perfect, so it's good to be able to choose 2.2 if you need it.
Slashdot, the site where everything's made up and the points don't matter
:)
I'm not going to totally knock Redhat, Mandrake & Co, but we already have what they provide. Connectiva is not providing anything new, aside from being predominantly non-english. Now we need a NEW choice, because there is nothing yet out there that really anyone can install and use. That means a very limited set of the population, the geek set, has access to a HUGE number of distros and choices. But what about the rest of the people? Where are their choices?
You had me at "dicks fuck assholes".
Simple. Use Corel Linux.
It's an end-user desktop Linux distribution. That is, it is not much more than a very, very bare bones Debian Linux (slink) setup, with a modified and (well) customized KDE desktop. If it can't start KDE it boots into 'safe mode' (twm). By default, there is no console login except for a sulogin on console 2 (console 1 only shows a textbox saying "Please press Alt-F7").
After you install it (and there's not much more to installing than choosing whether to overwrite Windows or not) you get a default desktop with a web browser, an email client, a small office suite (Wordperfect) and a couple assorted (graphical) tools.
Just about the same you get with a default install of Windows 9x.
I.e. *NOTHING* in respect to tools, network stuff, programming languages, etc. The whole install is about 300-400MB. Hell, the first versions of Wordperfect wouldn't even install because xlib was missing.
But the 'average user' wants to install 10000 additional tools after installing the OS. Apparently. They don't want the OS installation to span 1-2 GB, but already include almost every kind of software you will ever need.
If that's what you want, use Corel Linux. It's "Linux for Dummies".
Home Page
I find myself believing that Corel abandoned their distribution. Didn't even hand it off to somebody else, just dropped it.
Not something that I would want to recommend to anybody, but it's probably safe, as I don't think you can order it any more.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
But isn't it a valid choice to reject choices? I mean, shouldn't there be a distro that standardizes everything, for users who don't want to deal with all the options? One man's choice is another man's chaos.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
However, the up-and-coming distro redmond linux is based on Corel and certainly fills the linux for dummies void. It is by far the easiest operating system to set up and use that I have encountered. They're doing a good job up there in the city of evil.
on the first screen:
Do you have experience with linux?
Yes
No
If you check yes it will give you all the options and if you check no it will just install with default selections.
This would take about 5 minutes to add to an installer and would make everything a lot easier I think.
It is contradictory for you to slam people for debating the merits of three different package mamangement systems (deb, rpm, slack), and then you yourself argue for a fourth package management system which is used by Gentoo Linux. Hello! Pot calling kettle! Where are you? The scary part is that you got modded up so high. I mean, Gentoo has been mentioned many times on Slashdot.
Debian and Gentoo are the two Linux distros with the most promising package management systems. I am a Debian user myself, but once Gentoo releases a non-beta version of their distro, I will give it a shot. However, Debian works so well because of its open community. Only time will tell wether Gentoo will develop a similar community. In addition, apt-get'ing KDE, for example, is fast and painless on a low end PC with a cable modem connection. However, using Gentoo's system, not only would the download be larger, but there would be the overhead of building the software! So Gentoo might be great for workstations and servers, but for desktops and low end devices... it might not be the way to go.
Also, contrary to popular opinion, 2.4 ain't perfect, so it's good to be able to choose 2.2 if you need it.
I don't think you have to worry about anyone thinking 2.4 is perfect at the moment. Personally I'm getting excited now that the linus and ac branch are merging down and 2.5 is going to start soon. But of course all these changes means we'll have to wait a bit longer until we know 2.4 is edging towards well done.
So everyone bitched about this and didn't even find out this simple fact? It sounds like Connectiva is doing just fine with all the options. Mod this guy up!
That post had no real relevance you realise. You do realise that is full opinionated right? I quite personaly hate Window Maker. Maybe its fast, but blackbox is faster. And I dont need all those things floating around my desktop. Maybe its configurable but why waste my time when blackbox is how i want it already? Not to mention theres Ion, maybe a little less "pretty" but it gets the job done. blackbox has been the most productive for me, WindowMaker has only slowed me down, and Ion made me even faster. And to respond to another post up further. Why would a distro want to tell a user what to install? Can you say WINDOWS? My god man, the beauty of linux is choice, you have so much to choose from your bound to find something you like. If you really want someone to support non-newbies(lazy people as you have obviously made every one of them out to be) then Windows is there for you in all its gloriousness. Not every newbie would want KDE or Gnome. And to just force something apon them is counterproductive in the learning process. I for one want people to be more informed of linux not dissillusioned.
every dark cloud has a silver lining, but lightning kills hundreds of people every year trying to find it.