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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."
try
http://en.conectiva.com/download/
I use Conectiva 7.0 and I like it a lot. I also use Mandrake and all 3 BSDs. Conectiva has just the right amount of graphical-install and do-it-yourself that many people seem to yearn for. Both version 6 and 7 have found all the hardware except sound cards on my computers. After I finish the graphical install I use Red Hat's sound configurating program which is installed and waiting.
I think this is a very good product that has been overlooked too long. I recommend it to any beginner who finds other distributions too overwhelming. ISO's are available at linuxiso.org and it installs with a choice of the 3 major languages of the Americas.
Rinso
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.
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'?
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.
Perhaps the U.S. doesn't. But this is A Brazilian product, and technical support is gonna be in Portuguese. (Or Spanish, if you stretch it.)
The Brasilian people, yes, DO need a nice geek-catering distro, if only because it has techsupport in Portuguese.
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Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton