Libranet GNU/Linux 2.0 Coming Soon

tal256 writes: "As a proud employee of Libranet, I'm pleased to announce that Libranet has started taking pre-orders for Libranet GNU/Linux 2.0. I feel I should note, of all the vaunted Debian based commercial distributions (Stormix, Corel, Progeny) Libranet is the only one left. We got started before they did and here we still are. Libranet has proven that to stay in the race what you need is a good product rather than millions of dollars behind you; but that's what the world of Free/Open software is all about, isn't it? - Tal" I love Debian, but have never tried Libranet. (The machine I'm typing on was installed with a Stormix CD; my laptop started as a Progeny machine...) Since we seem to be running out of other Debian-based distros, looks like Libranet is my next choice. :)

Comments

Jeez, michael....

[Peter Harris]

...is the standard Debian installer that bad? Hmm -- well, yeah.

Re:Jeez, michael....

[Anonymous Coward]

Hasn't the Progeny installer been folded into Debian yet?

Re:Jeez, michael....

[Anonymous Coward]

Installer of Libranet isn't that different from standardDebian, but you can install right onto reiserfs without any modding, thats why I installed Libranet a year ago, and since then, not a single problem....

Re:Jeez, michael....

[Shanep]

And of course, it's the installer that matters most.

After having Debian on my PC for more than 2 years, I sure wish the installer was better.

I guess having a nice installer in Red Hat is a good thing, since after all the dependency hell, broken compilers, etc, people often "upgrade" via a reinstall from a RH CD.

I'll take apt for upgrades anyday. Debian installer? I barely remember it.

Re:Jeez, michael....

[Enahs]

Oh, the ritualistic hazing I got when I went to college? I hardly remember it.

The initial install, and the pain it invokes, matters to some because some people never get past the install. Duh.

Personally, my only peeve with Debian (Sid) is that nobody can seem to maintain KDE properly, but the harder-to-maintain GNOME base seems to work peachy. The excuse I've been given is that GNOME is easier to maintain. Hrm.

And that's a constant problem.

Re:Jeez, michael....

[Shanep]

The initial install, and the pain it invokes, matters to some because some people never get past the install. Duh.

What are those people doing playing with linux then? At some stage, no matter how cute Red Hat or Mandrakes installer is or the in-GUI user friendliness, you'll have to do something in linux that'll be a whole lot hairier than the Debian installer.

Personally, my only peeve with Debian (Sid) is that nobody can seem to maintain KDE properly,

Not a problem for me, I prefer Gnome. Seems to be more stable than KDE, though I have'nt bothered to use it in a long while.

Re:Jeez, michael....

[Enahs]

Not a problem for me, I prefer Gnome. Seems to be more stable than KDE, though I have'nt bothered to use it in a long while.

Duh, that was my point. Of course GNOME is more stable; more attention is paid to GNOME than to KDE, hence my peeve. In other distributions, it's Gnome, not KDE, that gives such fits, because GNOME is harder to maintain. Of course, nothing is impossible when you've got a grudge to keep.

Erm, no, actually, the probem is more likely due to the inability of Debian's maintenance tools to do recursive rebuilds i.e. if libpng gets rebuilt, rebuild everything that is dependent upon libpng. If something like that existed, it'd be far simpler for package maintainers, IMHO. Oh wait, FreeBSD already has that. Hrm.

Re:Jeez, michael....

[Shanep]

Duh, that was my point. Of course GNOME is more stable; more attention is paid to GNOME than to KDE, hence my peeve.

I was under the impression that much of the KDE instability was due to most of KDE being done in C++, something that the gcc folks themselves state, is not yet anywhere near as stable in their compiler as C is.

Why does Red Hat and Sun prefer Gnome? And what's with all the erm and duh? Another /. 12 year old? Maybe they came to the same conclusion many do, KDE is less configurable and less stable and if KDE were'nt so braindead in some of their licence decisions in the past, more would have embraced it to the point where it is on top. KDE can die for all I care.

I like cheese I'm lactose intolerant.

Re:Jeez, michael....

[Enahs]

I was under the impression that much of the KDE instability was due to most of KDE being done in C++, something that the gcc folks themselves state, is not yet anywhere near as stable in their compiler as C is.

Well, whatever; I just know I have great luck with KDE, and terrible luck with GNOME, in other distributions. FYI, GNOME isn't just C based. It's also based on C++, Objective C, and whatever language is popular this year.

Why does Red Hat and Sun prefer Gnome?

They're afraid that, if they write something non-Free, they'll have to pay for a Qt license.

And what's with all the erm and duh? Another /. 12 year old?

You, perhaps. I was being what is known as condescending. I'm actually quite young (28) but doggone it, I feel like saying "I'm right, you're wrong." ;-)

Maybe they came to the same conclusion many do, KDE is less configurable and less stable

Nope, it's not less stable, and I'm not sure what you mean by "less configurable." I find KDE to be quite configurable.

and if KDE were'nt so braindead in some of their licence decisions in the past,

Yes, and you've said the important phrase: in the past. As in, it's over, dead, gone.

more would have embraced it to the point where it is on top. KDE can die for all I care.

That's you're decision, if you want to be so immature as to hold a grudge. Which pretty much gives me more grist for my "GNUbies holding an anti-KDE grudge."

BTW, how does it work for one to be a GNUbie AND a GNOME enthusiast when people like Miguel (and dammit, I don't care what people say; it used to be his baby exclusively) whore the project around to proprietary vendors?

Marketing speak :)

[minus23]

I dunno... I'm betting most of the Slashdot'ers can recognize marketing speak. It's strange hearing that language spoken now since the dot bomb. Almost like speaking the language of Mordor. A language I will not utter here. :)

Re:Marketing speak :)

[CatherineCornelius]

Almost like speaking the language of Mordor.

ITYM Morrrrdorrrr.

Re:Marketing speak :)

[chadm1967]

Have you even tried Libranet? I've been using it for years and it's great! You might want to try something first then open your mouth!

Re:Marketing speak :)

[Anonymous Coward]

funny I thought it was a factual statement expressed sincerely with just a dash of rightfully
deserved pride.

true marketing speak like a polar bear plunge numbs
the brain within seconds.

Re:Marketing speak :)

[Shanep]

Almost like speaking the language of Mordor. A language I will not utter here. :)

Was'nt it Elvish on the ring that should not be uttered?

Re:Marketing speak :)

[modulus]

The characters were Elvish, according to Frodo, but the language was definitely of Mordor; the parent post nearly quotes the book/film.

I suspect it is something like the dialect of Elvish spoken in Mordor, by the Orcs, who were once Elves.

But then I'm no expert.

Re:Marketing speak :)

[Shanep]

Thanks for the clarification. I saw it yesterday and could have sworn the wizard said something to the effect of "it's some form of Elvish".

Then, I've never read the book and the flick was pretty long for me to remember.

I was thinking, "is this never going to end?" and then..... it did'nt. ; )

Loved it though.

Running out?

[Isle]

I am waiting for Xandros :)

And then there's Lindows, but I dont really consider that a linux distro.

Just for your infomation.

Re:Running out?

[StruyS]

Lindows does run on the linux kernel.

So it is in fact a linux distribution.

Re:Running out?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, it is an OS that utilizes the Linux kernel....just like the Linux distrobutions....however, I wil not give Lindows the pride that is given when you call somthing a LINUX DISTRO

Re:Running out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lindows is a Linux distro that runs Linux software and will also run some windows programs. How do you know that Lindows is not good when it have not came out?

The thing I don't get.

[jchawk]

What is the point of a debian based commercial linux os? Debian is by far my favorite choice. Getting it setup takes a little bit of time, but once it's running it is really super easy to update and install new software.

apt-get update
apt-get install foo_software

How hard is that? I don't mind paying to support linux, but why am I going to pay for a distribution based on debian, when debian already kicks butt?

And with the work being done on the debian install process it is getting easier all the time.

- I'll bash you in the forhead.

Re:The thing I don't get.

[bfree]

Ok for the sake of full disclosure I run Debian everywhere and have done for about 2-3 years and I used to work in Corel Linux International Technical Support (check THAT acronym hehe). There is a serious justification for debian based meta-distributions because while Debian will always be a horse for nearly all courses it's flexibility means that it is not targetted to most users. Corel Linux was/is a desktop OS and by making that choice Corel could configure a Debian box for an intended use. For 90% of computer users Corel Linux kicked Debian's ass simply because they would never have been able to work on a Debian system (what do you mean "edit /etc/samba/smb.conf to suit my windows network", "what do you mean man 5 smb.conf"?). Similarly we now have demudi which is another targetted Debian distro, but this time for an entirely different market (multimedia production). Debian could never really try to catch niches, all it does is produce a stably packaged distribution which can be configured and adapted easily. Corel and demudi could never really try to produce a quality OS from scratch nor keep it up to date. Instead of both sides giving up, the work, aims and ideas of Free software which Debian embodies so well (they want meta-distros) leads to a two tiered system where Debian brings the pieces together and the distros tweak it. Both sides push their knowledge at each other (though either side can ignore the other) and the base system which all are using is strengthened. The alternative is just Debian, and while I would continue to use it, I think it's "market share" would be much lower that way. Never forget that everyone using a non-Debian Debian-based distro is that much closer to just changing their apt sources and leaving the commercial (or redistributor) behind and becoming a member of the Debian community.

Re:The thing I don't get.

[gazbo]

Yeah, and I wonder how much it costs to get an advert like this on Slashdot? I've got a product I'd like to advertise - it's not a Linux distro, but it does add to open source software. Does that meet the criteria?

No, thought not.

Re:The thing I don't get.

[dimator]

Corel Linux International Technical Support (check THAT acronym hehe)

How did such a thing get past the damn executives in charge?!

I would have loved to work there, if only for the name tag/badge with my name, right above the acronym.

Re:The thing I don't get.

[satanami69]

I still use Corel 1.0 and 1.2 on both machines at home. It was the first Linux OS I tried, and I don't feel much like changing. The only time I wan't running Corel was when I made my own Linux from Scratch distro. Also, where can I get the download for all the Corel Office suites? Every since Xandros took over, I cannot get any of the cool stuff that came with the Corel Updater.

Re:The thing I don't get.

[Anonymous Coward]

How hard is that? I don't mind paying to support linux, but why am I going to pay for a distribution based on debian, when debian already kicks butt?

There are exactly two different reasons:

• Ease of use, installation and configuration. Installing, editing /etc/sources, configuring manually the machine (ppp, ...), is already too much for the use. For instance my TV ISA card was automatically recognized by Suse install ; I tried, but I stopped loosing time trying to get it running under Debian. Worse was trying to get XFree 4.0 running just was it was out. And now getting OpenGL on my NVidia, is still a significant work, no average user would do.
• The opposite reason for super-sysadmin : automatic management of say 100+ machines. Debian is just a big problem. Last time, I upgraded one machine it took about 1 day (yeah re-installing is faster). Not to mention there is nothing for the NFS server: storage redundancy, heart-beat, automated backup. As a result, since there is no hard-availability features other than special hardware or patches available elsewhere in "experimentation" or 0.02 versions and the like, I don't use a Debian file server - each user kind of auto-administrate his Debian (with apt-get), and has backups.

It would be VERY nice is Debian was able to run 2 Debian versions at the same time (or at least, as a boot choice) with basic Debian, and to automate that also "apt-get co-install new-unstable"). Dist-upgrade is not really practical for now (I now, I've been using all version since 1.3, man, those broken dependancies drove me crazy).

Re:The thing I don't get.

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll!

Your search - "Corel Linux International Technical Support" - did not match any documents.

Re:The thing I don't get.

[saintlupus]

How did such a thing get past the damn executives in charge?!

One suggestion for the Network Services group at one of my old jobs was Centralized Ubiquitous Network and Telephony Services.

--saint

Re:The thing I don't get.

[bfree]

Yep, no surprise you didn't find anything! There were 3 of us, the standard naming method gave us the name but really we were just "Linux Support" and the full name was never (to my knowledge) actually used anywhere anyone could see it (I wonder why). Just because something isn't online does not mean it is a lie!

Re:The thing I don't get.

[bfree]

There is no download of the Corel Office suites and never was. There was a download version of Wordperfect 8 (don't know if you can still find it) and a download version of PhotoPaint (was it 9). As for Corel Updater, you can just point your boxes to Debian and grab stuff from there BUT BE WARNED you may blast out some of the Corel customisation, particularly the samba integration. You can just dist-upgrade a Corel Linux box to Debian or you can pick your packages but I wouldn't (I have no knowledge, just guesses) expect Corel Updater to do you too many favours again in the near future (if ever) if you use the Corel sites.

The far more interesting question is can you still order the Linux WordPerfect Office 2000 or Draw 9 from Corel? If not I suspect that MS squeezed the out of it with their non-voting stock deal (do a grep of microsoft on the dll's supplied for a clue as to how Corel shot themselves in the foot and probably blew this).

Re:The thing I don't get.

[Enahs]

Another nice thing about this particular distro (like the other failed Debian derivatives ;-) is that it's actually Potato-based, yet comes with a number of packages that're more recent than Potato, and in the case of KKDE, nonexistent.

That's the nice thing about such a system: it gets the benefits of a well-tested core, so they don't have to concentrate on that (just on making an easier install, and I just installed it, and it's hella sweet) and more recent packages . . . all on this well-tested core. It doesn't get much better than this. ;-)

Nice Additude..

[joonasl]

I love this Q&A they had in their FAQ..

Is Linux really as good as I have heard?
It's better.

pre-orders?

[x1l]

Do they think there is going to be a run on these things? Why would you need to pre order?

Re:pre-orders?

[chadm1967]

Actually, over the past year, Libranet has befome extremely popular. You should checkout the Libranet-users mailing list.

If you've got nothing to say .....

[evil_roy]

"I love Debian, but have never tried Libranet. (The machine I'm typing on was installed with a Stormix CD; my laptop started as a Progeny machine...) Since we seem to be running out of other Debian-based distros, looks like Libranet is my next choice. :) "

Why add superfluous comments ? You have added nothing of any value whatsoever.

Re:If you've got nothing to say .....

[Anonymous Coward]

As usual, he wants to be sure that we know how cool he is.

btw, this is not offtopic, as it is a direct comment on part of the article.

"Libranet is user friendly for new users"

[da5idnetlimit.com]

Maybe this is why we need the new Debian.

So that anyone can try and Install Debian with little fuss...
AND get a stable system.

Maybe is my local lan ftp / Web server + Domain Controller is on it's way...

Would it run on a P133/24Mo ?

Re:"Libranet is user friendly for new users"

[joepa]

"Maybe this is why we need the new Debian. So that anyone can try and Install Debian with little fuss...

Last time I check, "trying and installing" -the "new version," nonetheless - of Debian GNU/Linux was as easy as this:

If you are using APT, you can use the following lines in your /etc/apt/sources.list file to be able to access packages in testing:

deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib non-free

Read the apt-get(8) and the sources.list(5) manual pages for more information.

#apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade

Re:"Libranet is user friendly for new users"

[sammy baby]

"Maybe this is why we need the new Debian. So that anyone can try and Install Debian with little fuss...

Last time I check, "trying and installing" -the "new version," nonetheless - of Debian GNU/Linux was as easy as this [debian.org]:

Uh, the emphasis there was on the "anyone," methinks. As opposed to, "people who already have Debian installed."

Re:"Libranet is user friendly for new users"

[Chanc_Gorkon]

That would work if the Potato installer would boot a 2.4 kernel, which I need. I have a ATA/100 drive as my main hard drive and I do believe that 2.2 does not handle it. I can't even play the install on one disk and move to another deal either. When Libranet 2.0 comes out I will check it out because I do love Debian based distros and I don't even have any bitches about Debian's installer either. I need these updates to have a usable system. Plain and simple. Plus, at least with Debian, I can count on them using a kernel that will be usable on most systems. Mandrake and Redhat both have that damn vesafb console crap and neither one of them works on my Nvidia. All I see during a reboot is a blank screen. Debian, I bet, would still use a text console. Sure, the penguin is cool, but why setup a vesafb if you don't need a vesafb (say because you have an unsupported by X video card)? I surely would not set up a vesafb just for the stinking penguin on a text console!

Re:"Libranet is user friendly for new users"

[Sentry21]

It will run easily on a P90 or P75. People use 486 machines to do what you want. A P133 will do this easily (unlses you get slashdotted).

The issue is ram. I don't know about 24 megs, but I know that on 16 megs of ram, dselect is slooooow (I left it for an hour and it still didn't even show me the package list), and don't even bother with X (which is probably what Libra's admin tools run under).

I would say try and scrounge up some more ram to at least get yourself to 32, to give yourself a nice margin. Apache takes up a fair chunk of mem even idling, and you don't want to spend hours just adding packages. Unpacking/installing from the command-line was almost as bad as dselect, because it was so heavy into swap, and my drive doesn't get on well with that kind of use.

You could use aptitude or console-apt, but I don't know how well those would've ran because I gave up and threw another 32 megs of ram in the box.

Anyway, if you learn the apt command-line tools, I can't forsee you having -too- much trouble, but pick up some extra ram if you can. You'll be glad you did.

--Dan

Re:"Libranet is user friendly for new users"

[joepa]

Uh, the emphasis there was on the "anyone," methinks. As opposed to, "people who already have Debian installed."

My apologies - I was solely taking into consideration the fact that everyone who is anyone should already have Debian installed (unless they are using FreeBSD, of course).

Uh, emphasis there was on the "is," methinks.

Re:"Libranet is user friendly for new users"

[Christopher Cashell]

Just to let you know, the next release of boot-floppies (the debian "installer") should include an optional 2.4.x kernel (you can select either a 2.2.x kernel or a 2.4.x kernel for the installation).

This should make Woody a lot more useful for a lot more people. ;-)

Re:"Libranet is user friendly for new users"

[Anonymous Coward]

> That would work if the Potato installer would boot a 2.4 kernel, which I need. I have a ATA/100 drive as my main hard drive and I do believe that 2.2 does not handle it.

Libranet's used a 2.4.x kernel since version 1.9.0.

Still there?

[Noodlenose]

We got started before they did and here we still are. Libranet has proven that to stay in the race what you need is a good product rather than millions of dollars behind you; but that's what the world of Free/Open software is all about, isn't it? I wonder what makes the difference. With so many distributors down the drain, what did Libranet different from the others (apart from VA and Redhat), and whether new startups like OpenOSX have a chance.

Dirk

Re:Still there?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pasting my reply to a question below yours. (Why is Libranet going to outlast the others? )

>>>>>>>

Rather, maybe it's what's not behind Libranet--as in creditors and/or investors who expect a return.

Even though they put out some great products for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Corel has had tons of trouble with money. Employees I'v spoken to confirm what the press insinuated: Michael Cowpland (COwpland REsearch Labs) blew too much money rather than manage the firm well.

Stormix also had a great product in Storm Linux, but they spent tons of dough on t-shirts, pens, mousepads, boxed distros with nice manuals, advertising in the Linux mags, too many employees, etc., etc. Guess what? They ran out of money and a great distribution went the way of T-Rex. I still have boxed versions of Storm Linux 2000 Deluxe and Storm Firewall for Linux, perhaps for sentimental value, but I hope to use them again on old machines. Too bad the development ended. Although some of their work/features did contribute to Debian and is still available.

So how is Libranet different? Well, AFAIK, it's a few people in a "garage-type office setting" who don't owe anybody anything so they won't have their doors closed for not paying up. If you order the CD, you'll get it in a simple case along with a "manual" that consists of about a dozen photocopied B&W pages all packaged nicely in a plain old padded mailing envelope. No frills here, and rather disappointing for some one who was introduced to the nicely packaged 4 CDs of Stormix with its nicely bound and very helpful Installation Guide (100+ pp.) and User Guide (200+ pp.) Of course, Corel also had similar goodies.

So the Libranet folks put most of their effort and resources into producing a very good distro and providing good support via their website and mailing list. In the end, this is what "delivers the goods" and it won't break them financially so they can grow stronger and bigger slowly and maybe one day they, too, will have a nice manual. =)

NLK

rootprompt review

[BrookHarty]

Reading the link from the rootprompt review.

In the default window manager (IceWM) there were over thirty themes available.

That is rather cool, Since icewm.themes.org isnt back up yet.

(OT)
BTW, went to see if icewm.themes.org is up, and noticed poll with a cowboyneal option... (ARGH!)

Theme Management
How do you handle managing themes (creating, installing, removing, customizing menus, etc.)?
() From the command line, like a real man.
() Using the GUI tools available.
() CowboyNeal does it for me.
() With difficulty; I'd like to see a new interface developed.
() What are themes?

Re:rootprompt review

[BrookHarty]

ME bad.
Looks like icewm.themes.org moved, its http://www.themes.org/themes/icewm/

Libranet ... yeah!

[Anonymous Coward]

I really like Debian. All my desktops, laptop and servers (I'm a sysadmin) run Debian.
I tried Libranet and went 'wow'. It's userfriendly enough (not like Mandrake, but hey, you get Debian!) to introduce new users to Debian and stable enough to not make those newbies regret it.

It's not bleeding edge (it's mostly the stable debian release with updated packages like recent kernel, X, KDE, Gnome), but more desktop minded than the regular Debian Stable release. I enjoyed when I used it (I wanted more bleeding edge, so I'm running Testing and Sid on my desktops. Yep. Add some lines into the sources.list and apt-get dist-upgrade into it!).

I really want Libranet to succeed (now that progeny is gone).

C.

Re:Libranet ... yeah!

[gwillden]

So...let me get this straight. You can use a more user friendly installer and then apt-get your way to Debian testing or unstable? That sounds really great to me.

I love running Debian, I've got it on my desktop and two laptops, but it is sometimes hard to install.
Good Luck Libranet, I would like a little easier install.

Re:Libranet ... yeah!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't tell this to the nice people of Libranet, but yes.
You can install from libranet (ReiserFS) en "apt-get dist-upgrade" your way into Testing or Sid.

C.

Re:Libranet ... yeah!

[Anonymous Coward]

if your company is so poor it can only afford free software, you will soon be replaced by a webmin GUI.

linuxisforbitches

Re:Libranet ... yeah!

[SquadBoy]

What parts of the install do you have trouble with I use it because it is so easy to install. :)

Re:Libranet ... yeah!

[Anonymous Coward]

> Don't tell this to the nice people of Libranet, but yes.
> You can install from libranet (ReiserFS) en "apt-get dist-upgrade" your way into Testing or Sid.

They're well aware of this; several adventuresome users (such as myself :-) have install Libranet on another couple of partitions and upgraded them to either Woody or Sid.

Doesn't change the fact that L gives a user a *really* nice base to start from when doing such experiments..and their adminmenu tool works just as well in Woody/Sid as the std Libranet :-).

Excellent, excellent.

pretty good

[SonofRage]

I recently installed the last verion of Libranet (1.91 or something) on my laptop and it's pretty good. It is more up to date than standard Debian and came with Ximian GNOME already set up. It also has this weird control panel thing that has a few config tools and even a button that will run "make menuconfig" for you so you can recompile your kernel which was kinda neat (but also kinda stupid since its not exactly difficult to type make menuconfig anyway.)

I found a bug in you post

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't widen the page under Lynx. Sorry, but I haven't found a fix for that bug yet.

Will Debian tame the Linux monster machine!

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Debian tame the Linux monster machine!

Not that anyone really cares about IA-64... :-)
ftp://download.intel.com/pressroom/temp/isscc_pa pe r_list.pdf (25 KB)
- says on page 4, that the core alone is 19x14 mm^2
- confirms 464 mm^2 total die size on page 5 (includes 3 MB L3)

ftp://download.intel.com/pressroom/temp/isscc.pd f (2.5 MB)
- claims to be "under embargo" until Monday, Feb 4 2002, 12:01 EST
- has a die picture on page 22

Enjoy!

OK, Where are the download ?

[da5idnetlimit.com]

Seems there is a free distrib available.

Anyone got the ftp ?

I could do with some FREE download...

xandros

[Anonymous Coward]

>I feel I should note, of all the vaunted Debian based commercial distributions (Stormix, Corel, Progeny) Libranet is the only one left.

Not quite, Xandros - formel Corel Linux, is coming with a new version within a few weeks, and a beta within a few days.

not the last one left

[jas79]

the company who bought corel linux from corel is still working on it.

and the lindows distubution is being based on that distro.

ftp.libranet.com

[da5idnetlimit.com]

Found myself.

My ping on server is 150, so not too slow.

But connecting to it...
Slashdotted FTP 8)

Hey you lousy hackers, let me grab some bytes 8)

OK, but fresh Debian Install ?

[da5idnetlimit.com]

Remember installing from 0 ?

editing the network config to manually remove the 47 NICs it installed ?

Moving a small (1k) file to the proper directory to make it work ?

...

I speak about all those "small" problems that always made a Debian install a 3 days - 5 kilos printed paper affair...

At least for me 8)

Re:OK, but fresh Debian Install ?

[Tipsy McStagger]

I needed a router quickly a few days ago and it took 20 minutes from sticking the woody cd in the drive to having a working system..

Admittedly, it's not patched or anything as it's only routing between 2 hubs sat on my desk unconnected from any real network but pointing it at the local mirror and typing "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade" wouldn't have taken much longer..

But then I don't run X or anything like that ;-)

mmm...

[SigmundK]

i would really like to see debian with a fancier installer, but after i had my lfs marathon, i have found no need for fancy graphics!

Cool

[roguerez]

Another distribution. Just what we need!

Re:Cool

[chadm1967]

Actually, Libranet has been around for a few years. They're really not that new.

Why I pay for open source

[daserver]

First: I really like the idea of open source and think thats it a big step towards better software.

Second: Big distributions like Red Hat, Suse and others have really great people working there. That is why I buy both Red Hat and Suse, not because I run them, but because they make GPL licensed software. Which means in the end that I can run them on my debian system.

Third: I know that my money put in distributions is well spent because the software is open source. Opposed to buying propietary software, where it feels like they are only after the money. They can also charge unreasanable high prices because they _own_ the right for the software.

Re:Why I pay for open source

[Sentry21]

I hope you donate to Debian too, or the Open Source Initiative at any rate. They do what you -actually- use, but no one gets paid for using it.

I just hope Libranet donates part of their profits to the OSI - it would only be fair. Debian makes the packages, the software, the formats, gets the servers, the maintainers, the bugfixes, the scripts and so on, and Libranet sells them. This is, of course, legal, but I think Libranet has a moral obligation to give some of their profits (even just a few bucks per copy sold) to make sure that this free ride stays free for everyone.

--Dan

Why would I install it?

[Lothar]

Anyone care to tell me what is so special about this distribution apart from its name (Libranet GNU/Linux)?

Choice of distro's is great but I can't honestly see what good this will do. No offence to the Libranet employees.

Why can't people start creating new (even commercial) applications on top of Linux istead of just releasing distro's?

Re:Why would I install it?

[Sentry21]

Because Debian is 'the distro your mother would use, if it were ten times easier'.

Libranet makes it ten times easier. Finally the best, most advanced, most convenient, best thought-out, most 'Free', and more widely accepted distro out there is usable by end users.

Sure, this post is incredibly subjective, but there are a LOT of people out there who agree - Debian is the epitome of what Linux should be. It's free, it's a community effort, making no money and giving everything they do away for Free.

Libranet is a chance to support that very effort, and indeed, an attempt (and, apparantly, success) at improving upon it.

This is why I think you should. There are likely other, more technical reasons, but I'm very emotionally invested in Debian's philosophy. Maybe someone else will tell you why it's objectively better, but not I, not today anyway.

--Dan

Re:Why would I install it?

[NDPTAL85]

"Libranet makes it ten times easier. Finally the best, most advanced, most convenient, best thought-out, most 'Free', and more widely accepted distro out there is usable by end users."

Well kinda sorta. It is nice how Red Hat, Mandrake and Suse test their own kernels before giving them to the users thus making sure they're more stable. Does Debian do this besides saying "Just stick with 2.2.x!"?

Re:Why would I install it?

[Sentry21]

It depends, really. The current 'stable' distro ships only with the latest 2.2.x kernel (which works great, really, for most users).

The 'testing' branch uses software that was in the 'unstable' branch for two weeks without having any bug reports (not including feature requests) filed against it. This is the best way to go if you're not a masochist.

The 'unstable' branch is the 'god only knows' branch. Going with unstable can mean that after a dist-upgrade, five core packages change in some unforseeable (by you) way, and 90% of your programs break (this has happened). Their philosophy is 'it's unstable. If you don't like it, don't use it, 'cause we don't know what'll happen any more than you do.'

In that sense, it's better than other distros, in giving you three options. You can stick with what's worked for a while, you can go with the cutting-edge but tested software, or you can go with bleeding edge and hope you can find a bandage before you pass out.

--Dan

Why Libranet?

[benmhall]

I've read a post here asking why bother with a commercial Debian distro, let me explain:

I have been a Linux user for about 4 and a half years now. In this time I've run the gamut, bouncing from distribution to distribution. For the last year and a half I've stuck with Debian. Why? It's stable, fast, light, well integrated and, if you use Testing, Sid or Ximian with Potato, very up to date. After getting used to Debian's quirks there's no going back for me. I played with RH7.2 lately, but I miss being able to decide that I need a new compiler and then being able to apt-get it.

Great, so that's why to bother with Debian. If you want more reasons please see the links below.

Okay, so why a commercial Debian? For convenience. Libranet adds a really nice adminmenu that consolidates pretty much every aspect of system management, from kernel compilation to X setup, to adding new users, changing your clock or setting up a DSL connection. It's all there in one spot. In addition, the setup is a little simpler than Debian's. Personally, I don't have a huge problem With the Debian installer. What it lacks in looks and polish it more than makes up for in flexibility. It's a great base installer. What Libranet has done is slightly massage it, rather than completely replacing it. This makes the parts that normally trip up new users go away, but still retains much of the underlying flexibility.

Another reason for Libranet is the initial package selection. If you're new to Linux, Debian can be a little... stark. Libranet bundles packages into sections and asks you easy questions like: Do you need a web server? Or, Should I install Office Suites. It's a little thing, but it's nice.

Then there's their support. The small knowledge base succinctly answers 90% of all new questions. Things like "How do I set up ADSL?" or "How do I share my internet connection?" are there, with very simple step-by-step guides on how to accomplish each task. If you need to ask them a question they will get back to you pretty much within a day. It's a small operation (about 6 people, I think.) and they have a nice personal touch.

Finally, at least with 1.9.1, they have kept a solid base (Potato) and added to it. They added reiserfs support, Kernel 2.4, XFree86 4.x, KDE 2.1, and Ximian Gnome. All of this can be done with pure Debian Potato, but it means understanding apt, searching out unofficial apt lines, manually configuring or even compiling packages. Libranet took this all away.

In short, Libranet is important because it takes away the annoying details.

Pure Debian most definitely has it's place. I use it on a laptop with an old video card and no CD-ROM, and have used it for an Alpha and NetWinder that I own. However, for end users who either don't want to learn what each package does or who want to save a bunch of time by letting someone else make some pretty safe assumptions, a commercial Debian distro such as Libranet is the way to go.

Okay, here are some links:

A bunch of testimonials from Libranet customers:
http://www.libranet.com/testimonials.html

Here's a review of 1.9.0:
http://www.thedukeofurl.org/reviews/misc/librane t1 90/index.shtml

Debian for BeOS users:
http://tinyplanet.ca/pubs/debian/html/book1.html

Reasons I like Debian: (Shameless self-promotion)
http://www.moses.cx/reviews/debian/debian.php

Re:Why Libranet?

[gfilion]

I played with RH7.2 lately, but I miss being able to decide that I need a new compiler and then being able to apt-get it.

Excuse my ignorance, but I see messages like this all the times, and I really don't understand. Can't you just rpm -Uvh gcc-*.rpm ?

Best,
GFK's

Re:Why Libranet?

[Howie]

Or you can install apt-rpm, and then you can apt-get things.

Re:Why Libranet?

[Brandon T.]

The difference is with RPM you actually have to find and download the RPM before you run the aforementioned command. With apt-get all you have to do is type in "apt-get install gcc" and it automatically fetches the package and any dependencies off of debian's ftp (or whatever other ftp you set up in your source list) and installs it automatically. Anyone who has used Redhat has a story about 'dependency hell', where one missing rpm caused another to fail, and then when the missing rpm was replaced, it had another dependency as well. apt-get and debian (for the most part) avoids this problem and makes upgrading a sinch. As someone noted below, apt-get has been ported to rpm by connectiva, so it is now possible to have a similar system with Redhat (though I have not tried it personally).

Re:Why Libranet?

[SilentChris]

I've bounced around distributions myself (RedHat at first, then Caldera and now Mandrake). My goal is to not necessarily have the latest software, but to have a smooth installation that doesn't destoy everything else on my computer in the process (like Windows XP). Mandrake 8.1 has been the first distro I used that properly identified the NT partitions on my drive, configured a boot loader to load my OS's, and run all of my laptop hardware out of the box (including my wireless network).

Is Debian, commercial or otherwise, at an installation stage when it can do that? I played with an installation on a server one time and was impressed by its content (if not graphical) installation polish (kind of reminded me of FreeBSD). But on a dual-boot machine will it kill my other OS? (Also, do they have the latest PCMCIA and other hardware drivers?)

Re:Why Libranet?

[chavo valdez]

I run Mandrake 8.1 and there is an apt rpm for it. You just have to add your favorite mirrors to the sources list. You can add the cooker trees to the list if you want even more bleeding edge stuff. Cooker is Mandrake's development tree. Some things are a pain to update over a modem, but not too bad if you stay current.

Re:Why Libranet?

[Andrewkov]

This is a double edged sword, though. I tried to apt-get one package (using dselect) and it ended up download something like 80 MB worth of packages, after which the system didn't work properly (X server wouldn't start, when I finally got it to work, KDE was giving all kinds of error messages, gnome wouldn't run). I had to reinstall from scratch. Probably my fault for not learning apt properly... And I should mention I've had similar problems with Red Hat Network, so it's not only a Debian problem.

However, overall Debian has a lot of good points and I enjoyed using it, and I will probably give it another try sometime in the future, or even Libranet, it sounds interesting.

Re:Why Libranet?

[dvdeug]

But on a dual-boot machine will it kill my other OS?

I've always installed Debian dual-boot and never had a problem. Even on the install, Debian is not a automatically-screw-everything-up system. It drops you right into cfdisk and you can even edit the lilo.conf before lilo runs, IIRC.

Re:Why Libranet?

[vekotin]

HP, among other manufacturers has said that they can't support Debian because it's not commercial. People from HP have agreed that Debian is a good distro, but they can't make proper agreements unless there's a company in both ends, and without such agreements, they can't add a cute "works with add_distro_name_here" ad on the spec sheet of their servers.

Libranet is letting Debian do even more than it does now(I didn't know that was possible ;). Nothing's perfect, but I honestly can't feel like complaining in any way.

What do I get?

[pointwood]

Took a quick look at the website, but I couldn't find any information about what software the new version includes?

Does it include the latest Xfree - what version of KDE? Gnome? Whatever?

Is it KDE or GNOME centric?

Re:What do I get?

[daserver]

Take a look again. kernel 2.4.16 kde 2.2.1 gnome (can't remember probably 1.4). xfree 4.1

Re:What do I get?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it includes pretty much the latest stuff for both KDE and Gnome. It's not centered on either of those desktops, though. The default desktop is actually IceWM (at least in 1.9.1). You can go to their site and click on screenshots to see some. For the first time, there will be more than one CD. The second CD will include StarOffice (I forget which version.) and maybe some other stuff. Sorry this is not very specific, but I can't remember everything I read in the users' mailing list post.

OK, I found it. Here's a clip from Libranet Newsletter dated 1/29/02:

>>>>>>>>>>>>&g t;>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>>>>&g t;>>>>>>>>>>>

"We have tried to pack this one with many features and new packages.
For example, browsers added are Galeon and Opera, and StarOffice is
now included in the 2 CD set.
Many thanks to those who participated in helping test Libranet's brand new
text based installer. Your feedback helped us identify potential problems
and inspired us to add some features.
There will not be a download version 2.0 for quite some time.
We think you will like this new Libranet."

I've been using it since Stormix died (1.8) and I like it a lot.

Re:What do I get?

[Anonymous Coward]

One more thing I forgot to mention is that you get great support through the users mailing list. I have posted questions and gotten several answers within minutes. It's a very friendly and helpful community. The Libranet folks themselves are often providing the answers to peoples questions there.

Other commercial Debian distributions

[kyrre]

feel I should note, of all the vaunted Debian based commercial distributions (Stormix, Corel, Progeny) Libranet is the only one left.
I do believe trustix is based on Debian. And it is a commercial distribution.

Re:Other commercial Debian distributions

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Trustix is based on Redhat. Although the main developer uses Debian. I wish Trustix was based on Debian. A server only based distro would rock.

Re:Other commercial Debian distributions

[keeg]

Considering that it is a rpm-based distribtion, I rather doubt that it it based on Debian....

Butt-ugly interfaces

[selderrr]

God knows I love linux, but each time I see one of these distro screenshots, I turn my head 90 degrees towards my powerbookG4 with my external cinema display and say to myself "jezus, those apple interface design guys are good !"

I wonder why there aren't any good graphic designers addicted to linux, so that eventually, we'll get some kick ass graphics too..

Re:Butt-ugly interfaces

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because all the good graphic designers are Mac geeks.

Re:Butt-ugly interfaces

[ACK!!]

Check out a real screenshot.

My Desktop

Re:Butt-ugly interfaces

[selderrr]

wait, let me rephrase this :

I wonder why there aren't any good graphic designers addicted to linux, so that eventually, we'll get some kick ass graphics too ??

Re:Butt-ugly interfaces

[Brandon T.]

I think TigerT is a great graphics designer, and doing great work with the new gnome icons. Take a look at his stock icons page to see the icons. The linux desktop is just like any other desktop, it can be made to look really great, or you can put an ugly background and use an ugly window manager and make it look like shite. It basically comes down to each user's preference. I did notice that the screenshot's on Libranet's site were quite ugly, but don't let that make you think that all linux desktop's look that way.

Re:Butt-ugly interfaces

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you just proved his point.

Re:Butt-ugly interfaces

[stankyho]

You mean like here: http://www.linuxartist.org/ or Tigert: http://tigert.gimp.org/

Some great gaphic designers there. Oh yea and some of the Eazel/Nautilus/Ximian guys were Mac designers.

Re:Butt-ugly interfaces

[Noodlenose]

This is actually quite nice: the Icons have a nice plasticity and the background looks gorgeous. nevertheless the control fields on the terminal windows frame again are pretty ugly. Nevertheless, I am impressed.

Dirk

Re:Butt-ugly interfaces

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with that "speaker" button on the dock that looks like it fell off a piece of Win 3.1 shareware?

I assume that rectangle thing is a volume slider, but I'm not sure. Why's it purple? Why is the slider part inset?

Also what's with that printer and the misaligned word "Print"?

What's that turd thing in the upper right corner?

Why are their rivets on the menubar? Is that a grabber? Also the window controls (minimize etc) are just little blotches and are far too small and close together.

Furthermore, I have to say that you are cheating by not running any apps :)

Re:Butt-ugly interfaces

[Ween]

Well, I actually think that is a very nice looking desktop.

I can see that its apparently part of Suse, but what components make that up so I can recreate it. I see that Ximian is there, as well as Gnome of course. What settings do I do and whatnot?

Ive not touched gnome in about a year and a half.

Re:Butt-ugly interfaces

[ACK!!]

Install SuSe 7.3.

Install Ximian Gnome.

Next time you log in Doorman app will ask about setting your layout.

When the Doorman app asks you about what kind of layout choose CDE.

To get the menu bar up top you right click on the panel and choose a menu panel.

The background is in the KDE wallpaper dir /opt/kde2/share/wallpapers

The GTK theme is SuSE theme and the sawfish theme is DarkrmCalamari.

The file manager is obviously Nautilus and I got the emblems most of them from the Ximian-South theme but I made others myself. Emblems are those icons over my folders on the desktop.

I used the Teal Nautilus theme (every app in the universe has to be themable don't you know?).

Oh yes, I used the advanced Nautilus setting to have my home dir as my desktop

Since this is my work box I have LinNeighborhood set up on my Desktop that is what the Net directory is on my desktop.

I choose to have the mixer on my panel (it is one of the many applets you can have running on your panel and yes it does look ugly but its functional I wish there was a gamix connected mixer applet with a better default look) and the print applet because it is nice to just drag a text file over and have it print instead of having to open it up or go back to the command line and lpr the thing.

Finally I just choose a different icon for the terminal and the Suse menu. No special magic the SuSE menu icons is in the SuSE default /usr/X11/share/icons/png/48X48/apps (is that a path or what!) and the terminal is in the gnome default /opt/gnome/share/pixmaps.

________________________________________________ __

Re:Butt-ugly interfaces

[ACK!!]

> What's with that "speaker" button on the dock that looks like it fell off a piece of Win 3.1 shareware?

It is ugly and it is the default mixer applet for Gnome. As you move the slider the color you refer to changes to in some way indicate volume.

>Also what's with that printer and the misaligned word Print"?

It is actually a kind of neat applet. If I am browsing my filesystem with the Filemanager I can drag a text file onto the Printer applet and it prints. It is easier than opening the thing up in an app to print.

>What's that turd thing in the upper right corner?

It is the running terminal app. The screenshot is kind of small for that sort of detail but the task list can be gotten from the upper right hand corner.

>"Why are their rivets on the menubar? Is that a grabber?

Yes it is. Detachable menus and such.

>Also the window controls (minimize etc) are just little blotches and are far too small and close together.

I like small titlebars. Trust me I can see some of your other points but that one is preference thing there are a zillion sawfish themes with various size title bars to choose from.

________________________________________________ __

Where can i download it from ?

[Anonymous Coward]

its not really free if nobody can access it

Re:Where can i download it from ?

[Anna Merikin]

ftp.metalab.unc.edu/pub/Linux/distributions/libran et

Help wanted [Re:The thing I don't get.]

[Derwen]

What is the point of a debian based commercial linux os? Debian is by far my favorite choice.

Others have answere this point, I just wanted to add that whilst I think it's great that other distributions are basing themse lves off of Debian, users should not forget that Debian itself is a community project, dependent upon voluntary effort.
If anyone would like to give something back and get involved - by maintaining a package, fixing bugs, translating something into a nother language or whatever, please do.
Get on the appropriate mailing list and join in :-)

- Derwen

"Libranet" ?

[lpontiac]

Does that come with wings to prevent memory leakage?

Re:"Libranet" ?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, but it still won't fly!

Re:The distro I would like to see..

[Anna Merikin]

Go here. It's just what you're looking for, apparently. http://www.chsoft.com/dv.html

"...here we still are?"

[omarius]

"Good is our Linux distribution! Powerful it is!"
Thanks for the update, Yoda.

Of course...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Debian was there before all of them :)

And I dare say it's more widely used, too.

Re:The distro I would like to see..

[Anonymous Coward]

This sounds like Windows 9.X to me, and why would anyone want that?

Nice 8)

[da5idnetlimit.com]

My last Debian install was "some" time ago.

For the routing job i was quite used to FreesSco (www.freesco.org)

VERY nice one floppy router / DSL / Cable acces.
And some sort of NAT.

I just love this one, one floppy, 5', and running 8)

I'll try Woody next week. I was trying to get my 98 box to connect to a 2kPro server without a PDC and the only way I found yet is to open the server to Anybody...

Maybe this Samba-PDC thing will be worth it 8)

BTW, FTP is still slugging it's way to answering. I download a Woopping 9 bytes /s 8|

Any test/trail versions ?

[Quazion]

I am using Slackware at the moment which seems to be fine for me, but i always love to try new stuff..
But i seem to have to buy it, i dont see why I would buy a Linux distribution when i can download others, i can see why others would buy it. Maybe i will buy it when its good, but i want to test it first.. Anyone got a nice idea ?

Quazion.

Re:Any test/trail versions ?

[Brandon T.]

You can download Libranet 1.9.1. If you installed and liked that version, then it would follow that you would like the new and improved version as well.

Brandon Tallent.

Re:Any test/trail versions ?

[Andrewkov]

Since they are building on an existing GPL product, don't they have to provide at least source code, if not the whole thing for free?

Re:Any test/trail versions ?

[spauldo]

They only have to supply source code if they distribute binaries.

You can charge money to distribute GPL'd binaries - there's no limit on how much, except the limits of what people will pay. You do have to provide source upon request (you can even charge a media/shipping fee for that), but if you don't provide the binaries to someone you're not obligated to distribute source to them.

But, there's nothing against someone buying said GPL code and distributing it for free. Companies get around this by putting some non-GPL'd stuff in their distros so that ISO's can't be distributed. Note, this isn't necessarily done for this purpose - there's a lot of good linux software that isn't redistributable, but included as a value add. This is why many distros have a "free" and "pay" version - the free version is just the pay version without the non-redistributable software. Including CDE or Motif* would be a good example of this.

*Not so sure about Motif, with it's weird license. Been a while since I looked at it, since I usually only run Motif apps on Solaris, which comes with Motif.

What's wrong with the installer?

[Hanul]

I usually use Red Hat or SuSE Distros with their nice graphical installers, but for some old HP PA-RISC machines I have to rely on the Debian distribution, because Debian is the only one to include the PA-RISC architecture. While the installer is far from good-looking, it does the job. It's like YaST1 from SuSE or the FreeBSD installer. Do we really need a penguin looking at us while installing Linux?

Re:What's wrong with the installer?

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, while there's nothing wrong with not having a gui, the debian installer is not intuative enough. It's been a pain to do a proper X installation by default too. Stormix has been my favorite so far. I hope LibraNet will do a good job.

Re:What's wrong with the installer?

[Drinahn]

Hmm, I suspect it is all relative regarding installers. I use debian everywhere it matters, Solaris where debian would be silly. To me a red hat install is painful, I want to get dirtier than that, but on the other hand, Solaris 8 install via serial cable is hell (my most recent experience being over 6 hours last night). Debian is nice, it's in the middle. They've discovered ncurses at least, which is an improvement. I will admit that dselect can be a bit unnerving for newbies though.

Re:What's wrong with the installer?

[drik00]

can't go wrong with good ole Slack install :)

however, i'm quite interested in trying Debian sometime, maybe when 2.6 is released ;)

Re:What's wrong with the installer?

[Peter Harris]

Believe me, I'm not knocking Debian. I have got through about 6 installs so far, each time easier than the last.

I might play with the PA-RISC port too, since my current employer has an old HP9000 kicking around that is regularly wiped and re-installed for training purposes.

Re:The distro I would like to see..

[Carik]

Have you considered looking for a newer version of DOS, and running that?

It sounds like it's just what you want.

Can someone clear up something for me?

[Uttles]

What is the difference between a Debian based Linux distro and say Red Hat or Mandrake? Is the Debian based easier to administer (more powerful)? I've noticed RH and Man. doing some funny setup of directory structure and applications, do the Debian based distros go with some predefined standard?

Re:Can someone clear up something for me?

[Sentry21]

Well, the first thing people notice is the package format. Debian, way back in the olden days of yore, when men were real men, and so forth, decided to invent a format for binary packages on Linux. Wtihout getting into technical detail, they were doing very well and their ideas were very well thought out.

RedHat wanted to use said package format, but the Debian folks did not want to go with a half-baked product. (This paragraph is heresay)

RedHat invented its own package format, RPM, which was apparantly designed to suck. It does this very well. It is buggy, often incompatible, and goes through version changes quite often, which makes each distro incompatible with the last, and each new package incompatible with the previous distros.

(One time, I was attempting to install OpenSSH on a RH box I was adminning. to put on OpenSSH, I needed OpenSSL. To install OpenSSL, I needed to get RPM v.5 (4 was installed). To install RPM V.5, I needed to replace half my packages. Another time, I tried to install a package on a RH box, and it said that it required '/usr/bin/perl'. I did an 'ls /usr/bin/perl' and there it was. From that moment on, I have never touched an RPM.)

Debian's package format, combined with the apt suite of tools, allows it to download new (to you) or updated software from a server on the internet, from a LAN, from a CD-ROM, or from a local drive, over HTTP, FTP, or mounted filesystems (the CD-ROM voodoo is pretty neat). If you try to install a package (for example, the xchat IRC client) and you do not have the libraries needed to run it (libgdk, libgtk+1.2, etc.) it will automatically add these to the list of packages to be installed, and will then prompt you to continue.

All software packaged for Debian and included on the official Debian mirrors follows rather stricy guidelines about where things go - important binaries in /bin, /lib, etc., everything else in /usr/bin, /usr/lib, etc. Various files in /var, logs in /var/log, and so on. Everything has a place, and it all makes sense.

Also, it feels very modular, thanks to brilliantly executed install scripts and lots of testing time. For example, if you do not have logrotate installed, your logs are in /var/log and get rather large. As soon as you install logrotate, however, all your /var/log logs are automatically rotated, and after two rotations the logfiles are gzipped. It's all automatic. You don't have to compile logrotate and install it, you don't have to edit example scripts and put them in, and you don't have to edit cron scripts to make it work, and then wonder why your logs get deleted every 5 hours because you missed a semicolon. Debian is the distro for people who install Linux to use it, instead of admin it.

My last comment for the day, Debian is Free in every sense of the word. They do not charge you. They do not hold anything back from you. In fact, it was, until recently, rather impossible to buy anything from Debian, as Debian is not even an official organization. Lately, there have been boxed versions of Debian (of which I have everything but the CD), which included a cool-ass bumper sticker and a 360+ page special-edition book on learning Debian from O'Reilly Press. I don't know if they still sell these. I hope so.

If you wish to give money, you can give to the Open Source Initiative (OSI), if you wish to buy a CD you can buy them from someone online. If you wish to sell a CD, just make sure you're using the official ISOs (there is more information about this at Debian's cd image website) and go nuts.

Oh, one more thing - software. Last time I ran Debian, I had a pretty tricked-out list of software sources from around the internet, totalling something like 9600 packages. Yes, nine thousand, six hundred individual pieces of software. You want choice, you got it.

There are hundreds more reasons to choose Debian, and there are dozens of reasons not to use RedHat. I'm going to avoid RedHat bashing though, because I think Debian's merits speak well enough without hilighting RedHat's faults.

Visit their webpage, read the social contract, and the free software guidelines. It's very interesting, even from a philosophical point of view.

--Dan

Re:Can someone clear up something for me?

[rjh]

One time, I was attempting to install OpenSSH on a RH box I was adminning. to put on OpenSSH, I needed OpenSSL.

Funny, "./configure && make && make install" works fine for me on a RH box. Go figure.

To install RPM V.5, I needed to replace half my packages.

See above. If upgrading via RPM is too dependency-ridden, compile from source. You're an admin. Be an admin, not somebody who insists on having everything prepackaged in a format a deaf-blind rhesus monkey with a drinking problem could use.

To install OpenSSL, I needed to get RPM v.5 (4 was installed)

You know, I'd take this anecdote of yours more seriously if RPM 5.x even existed (which it doesn't).

[rjhansen@numbers rjhansen]$ rpm --version
RPM version 4.0.3

That's on a RH 7.2 box. If you've got RPM 5.x, I'd love to know where you picked it up.

Re:Can someone clear up something for me?

[Sentry21]

See above. If upgrading via RPM is too dependency-ridden, compile from
source. You're an admin. Be an admin, not somebody who insists on
having everything prepackaged in a format a deaf-blind rhesus monkey
with a drinking problem could use.

In fact, I did this, but considering that the last sysadmin had the box so fucked over (there was various crap - files, dirs, installation, sourcecode, etc. in /), I wasn't looking forward to assuming where everything was.

Turns out I had to anyway. *shrug*

As for the RPM version thing, as you can tell from the anecode, I didn't pay too much attention to the state of affairs of RPM, and I am wel aware that I don't know what version were out. Bump everything down by enough version numbers to make things make sense, and there you go.

--Dan

Re:Can someone clear up something for me?

[Sentry21]

And a big 'screw you' to lynx, for pasting all that whitespace, and slashcode, for actually changing it all to non-breaking spaces for the first time I've ever seen.

--Dan

PS: I wasn't an admin. I wasn't getting paid, it wasn't my box, and they would have had to pay me a lot of money to fix that mess.

Linux is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another linux knockoff! This splintering
is why each individual linux and linux
collectivley is doing so badly.

Re:Linux is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder why all the major servers are changing to Linux. Yeah your right MS will take over the world! But wait there's hotmail, another example of MS mass computing DUH :D GAL

A different view

[clump]

Corel Linux was/is a desktop OS and by making that choice Corel could configure a Debian box for an intended use.

I have no qualms there. Debian is *ultra* flexible, to the point where some people think it is... gasp... difficult to install! But then most users don't feel it necessary to install via CD then be asked later where to get the packages to install. That is good, in my opinion, because you can mix all kinds of installs and media types during installation. Normal users, however, may think it is a redundant step.

For 90% of computer users Corel Linux kicked Debian's ass simply because they would never have been able to work on a Debian system (what do you mean "edit /etc/samba/smb.conf to suit my windows network", "what do you mean man 5 smb.conf"?)

This is where I disagree. Yes, Corel made certain things like installation easier but Corel gave up quickly after the distro was released. Users wanting security upgrades were up the creek. So even if users knew about security it was by no means easy to get updates from Corel.

For the parent, I will have to agree. I think that Debian-based distros have an uphill battle to fight when competing against normal Debian, but in all fairness, thats not who they compete against. The Debian developers just make a solid distro regardless of deadlines and marketing. Thats great for us knowledgeable folk, but newer users need a little more help.

Re:A different view

[SubtleNuance]

...but Corel gave up quickly after the distro was released...

More like Microsoft told them to get out of the Linux market or they wouldnt invest in them (or hire their services).

Corel isnt in the Linux business because MS didnt want Corel Office / Corel Draw etc to start targetting Linux because their was no room for them on Windows. It would have helped prove that MS stiffles the PC software world && help GNU/Linux bust onto the desktop.

Should I mention that MS owns (still?) a big chunk of Apple stock...

MS controls Apple and MS put the screws to Corel.

I enjoy a good conspiracy as much as the next guy, but please, think about what Ive said here and
*

Via Office && Explorer: Imagine Wall Street's panick over AAPL if MS announced a discontinuation of these apps. Moderate Apple users would also flee.

Via their 'Non-voting shares': Wouldnt dumping the shares also cause a decrease in AAPLE, and a further decrease due to Wall Street jitters about Apple becoming a target for MS.

Apple && MS are quite cozy. Without Apple, who would MS prop up as their competition. And Corel, well they were sinking anyway -- MS made them an offer ($$$) they were in no position to refuse.

Re:A different view

[bfree]

Hmm, Corel Updater pointing to Corel and Debian Security is a good big step along the way (you might have to decide whether to break Corel's work and take a debian security update or to risk ploughing on without it). You suggest that all Corel did was make an easier installer, but that's just ignorant! Did you ever install and use Corel Linux? It had samba filemanager integration, a "control panel" which actually did more than tweak your window manager (like control aspects of X or setup printers), Corel Updater which is a KDE apt frontend and the most ridiculously easy installer IF your hardware was supported (each version expanded the installers supported hardware significantly).

Why do you think a Debian based distro has a fight versus Debian? I would forsee/hope that in 5 years only 5% of "Debian" users would actually be using debian.org's version and the rest would be using a repackaged version that does what you need, how you need and is supported the way you want. A company could even sell debian.orgs version but with their own ftp servers for packages and their own support system (i.e. phone and email support for debian). Why should people break their back tweaking and configuring Debian to their task when there are 5% of Debian users (or would be debian users) who need the same! Why should Debian set their base configuration to suit any section of the users instead of providing a sane default setup for everyone to work from? The question is will commercial or non-commercial distros win? My money is on demudi to show the world just how good debian is and for more to follow.

Re:A different view

[Adversary]

I'm not sure MS' investment was the reason Corel dumped Linux. As I see it, it's more likely that both were caused by the same factor: Corel was in bad shape.

Dumping Linux was all about Corel "focusing on key areas", meaning as a business, they couldn't justify continuing development on it. I doubt Microsoft gave two shits about Corel doing development on Linux. I mean, they wanted them to do .NET for Linux! Check the old press releases!

And if anyone is curious about the (former) Corel distribution, check out Xandros

Why is Libranet going to outlast the others?

[Logger]

What's behind Libranet that is going to prevent it from going the way of so many other Debian based distros?

Re:Why is Libranet going to outlast the others?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather, maybe it's what's not behind Libranet--as in creditors and/or investors who expect a return.

Even though they put out some great products for Windows, Mac, and Linux, Corel has had tons of trouble with money. Employees I'v spoken to confirm what the press insinuated: Michael Cowpland (COwpland REsearch Labs) blew too much money rather than manage the firm well.

Stormix also had a great product in Storm Linux, but they spent tons of dough on t-shirts, pens, mousepads, boxed distros with nice manuals, advertising in the Linux mags, too many employees, etc., etc. Guess what? They ran out of money and a great distribution went the way of T-Rex. I still have boxed versions of Storm Linux 2000 Deluxe and Storm Firewall for Linux, perhaps for sentimental value, but I hope to use them again on old machines. Too bad the development ended. Although some of their work/features did contribute to Debian and is still available.

So how is Libranet different? Well, AFAIK, it's a few people in a "garage-type office setting" who don't owe anybody anything so they won't have their doors closed for not paying up. If you order the CD, you'll get it in a simple case along with a "manual" that consists of about a dozen photocopied B&W pages all packaged nicely in a plain old padded mailing envelope. No frills here, and rather disappointing for some one who was introduced to the nicely packaged 4 CDs of Stormix with its nicely bound and very helpful Installation Guide (100+ pp.) and User Guide (200+ pp.) Of course, Corel also had similar goodies.

So the Libranet folks put most of their effort and resources into producing a very good distro and providing good support via their website and mailing list. In the end, this is what "delivers the goods" and it won't break them financially so they can grow stronger and bigger slowly and maybe one day they, too, will have a nice manual. =)

NLK

apt-get

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it all Debian users (and yes I am one too), are so impressed with apt-get? up2date on RedHat 6.2 and up is just as good, if not better...granted you can't update to a whole new dist but I always do clean installs anyway...

Connectiva has apt-rpm

[Anonymous Coward]

Why choose debian when you can have apt at home with your current distribution:
ftp://ftp.conectiva.com/pub/conectiva/.0/EXPERIM EN TAL/apt/ (APT-rpm)

Not free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems that 2.0 is only going to be available on CD, and not for free?

http://www.libranet.com/download.html

"Version 2.0 is available on CD only"

No try before you buy?

Re:Not free?

[Anonymous Coward]

> No try before you buy?

My understanding is they have a 30-day moneyback policy (less shipping), and that the 2.0 downloads won't be available for quite some time.

Eventually, yes, but they need to make some front-end money to make up for the development costs.

Ports.

[saintlupus]

Since the submitter works there and all...

Any chance of this getting ported to other architectures? I'd love to try it out, but my only Linux box (currently running Debian) is a m68k machine.

(Come to think of it, Debian is the _only_ native English m68k Linux distro. Possible market?)

--saint

but why not apt-get

[Anonymous Coward]

For those of us who require stability.
We like to see exactly what is required and what has been downladed and to keep and track those downloads. In this case apt-get is to be avoided because it is too much of a black box.

Re:but why not apt-get

[ArtDent]

Actually, apt will tell you everything it is going to do, before it does it. If anything it's going to do is more than you asked for (e.g. adding or upgrading an extra package to satisfy a dependency or removing one to satisfy a conflict), it will ask you for confirmation before it starts.

It leaves behind all the packages it downloads, until you tell it to get rid of them (all of them, or only those that aren't currently installed), so, if need be, you can go back to previous versions.

There's a difference between automating tedious tasks and hiding them. But, hey, if you wanna playing the "rpm -i"/find dependencies/download dependencies/reapeat game, be my guest. Just don't pretend that it's an informed decision, okay?

Re:but why not apt-get

[Anonymous Coward]

> We like to see exactly what is required and what has been downladed and to keep and track those downloads. In this case apt-get is to be avoided because it is too much of a black box.

Suggestion:

apt-get --simulate -u etcetcetc

This will show what would happen if this were done for real, and the -u will show you what packages will be installed/removed/updated by the operation requested.

Libranet is GREAT...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used Libranet and I loved it.

-AC

Corel isn't gone

[Penguinoflight]

It's just sold to Xandros. They've announced they're almost done recently. I find debian to confusing to install to be worthwhile.

Try it without a reinstall.

[Fweeky]

My first Debian system started life as a Coral Linux install - I edited /etc/apt/sources.list to point at debian/unstable, did an apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade, and 80MB or so later I had a real Debian system.

I dare say you can do similar things with this.

if it was a serious question

[DuckDodgers]

I'm probably going to be off a bit with my reply, but I can give you the gist. The first difference is non-commercial versus commercial, and the second is package management.

Debian is not for profit, and denotes all non-free or non-open source software that comes with the distribution as such. It is volunteer-run and also not particularly newbie friendly. Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, etc... are run by for profit companies. Because they're out to make profit, it's in their vested interest to be newbie friendly. I've installed Debian potato and Suse 7.2, and the Suse install was much easier. Other than ease of install, commercial vs. non-commercial makes no difference to me, but it is important to some people.

The real distinction is in the packaging system. Red Hat started the R(edhat)P(ackage)M(anagement) system, and a big chunk of the commercial distributions use it. So if you want to install a new package, you obtain the .rpm file and then install it using the rpm program.

Debian uses A(nother)P(ackaging)T(ool). You can configure apt to read from hard drive, CD-ROM, and/or the internet. Apt takes rpm two steps further, by fetching the package for you and also grabbing and also installing all necessary dependent packages. You can easily automate massive installs this way, including updating every package on your machine to the latest release (as far as I know).

That WOULD give a tremendous advantage to Debian, except for the nature of open source... some creative programmers wrote an apt for rpm files. So now you can do everything a Debian user can do with an rpm-based distribution.

Re:if it was a serious question

[vicviper]

That WOULD give a tremendous advantage to Debian, except for the nature of open source... some creative programmers wrote an apt for rpm files. So now you can do everything a Debian user can do with an rpm-based distribution.

Not entirely true. Debian has a strict packaging policy (http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/) that I find lacking in RPM-based distros. Apt is just a front-end. It's the policy that allows the front-end to work the way it should

My prefered Debian based distro

[whizzird]

Is Debian Sid.

Well, that's definitely lost my interest....

[aziegler]

(Sure, some folks will think this is a troll, but it's simply my opinion on the matter.)

They're definitely not getting a sale to me; anyone who buys into RMS's stupidity by calling it GNU/Linux does not deserve my money or my download time. As many others have pointed out ever since RMS tried the even dumber Lignux, calling it GNU/Linux ignores the many other contributions (X11, BSD, etc.) that have made the whole Linux-based OS what it is.

Re:Well, that's definitely lost my interest....

[Anonymous Coward]

> They're definitely not getting a sale to me; anyone who buys into RMS's stupidity by calling it GNU/Linux does not deserve my money or my download time.

...you do realize that the Debian project calls theirs "Debian GNU/Linux", yes? Libranet's just following the lead of the s/w on which they based their distro. So, I guess you wouldn't be using the Debian s/w either..

Re:Well, that's definitely lost my interest....

[aziegler]

As a matter of fact, I don't use Debian -- and for precisely that reason. It might be the best Linux distribution around, but while Stallman made important contributions toward the establishment of open source (yes, I know he'd disagree -- he established "Free Software", but open source is the more mature and viable form), he's rather let it go to his head.

How about Debian?

[Kidbro]

Since we seem to be running out of other Debian-based distros, looks like Libranet is my next choice. :)

See subject :)

Here is a good one!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Download the CD, burn the CD, boot the CD, install the stuff, point youre /etc/apt/sources.list to woody or sid.
Tada!
A easy install with an upgrade path. ;-)
YEAH!

My experience with Libranet

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought Libranet 1.90. It had some missing pieces. Within a few days there was another release - 1.91. I had to pay again if I wanted it. I passed. Then it was released for free with the explanation that the company is going out of the Linux distro business. I tried it. Crashed on nvidia card. Whiped it out, installed Mandrake free. But I like Debian and will be switching when its get stable. In short Libranet seem to have trouble with making their mind as what they want to do with Linux. They seem so uncommited and unreliable. Debian is rock solid just a little slow comming. I learned to like that.

Which is best distro for a new linux user?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this is a stupid question...I've tried a lot of distos and I tend to use Mandrake b/c:
1) I first used RedHat and got used to RPMs etc
2) I have been using Mandrake for a while and got used to their config wizards and gui helpers

But, I was wondering for a new, reasonably savvy user (someone capable of picking up Linux), what would most of you recommend as the best beginners distro. It seems that you either choose an RPM based distro of an Apt/Deb based one and that first use experience will lock a lot of users into that distro for a long while. So I think this is a reasonable question. Which should it be, and why?

Re:Which is best distro for a new linux user?

[spauldo]

There is no one perfect distro for learning linux. It depends how you learn.

For instance, I learned way back in the day on slackware. I had a friend help me out, and in a month I was runnin' it exclusively. Very little was automatic; there was a utility to change your network settings, and pkgtool, but that's about it. Want to install software? Download the tarball and compile it. Something went wrong? RTFM. Still can't figure it out? Jump on IRC and see if someone will help you.

Needless to say, not everyone learns best that way.

Mandrake's easy to get running and use, but you won't learn much about linux doin' it. I knew a guy who ran caldera for over a year and didn't know how to compile a program. Having GUI utilities around won't really teach you much unless you try to learn.

Debian's a good median I think - if you have someone experienced around to point you in the right direction, you won't have too much of a problem. Apt takes away the pain of package management without hiding it all from you, but you'll find very few GUI admin tools. The nice thing is that with Debian, it's standardized enough that almost all the documents at the LDP are relevant - to change something, you edit files in /etc or whatnot.

As for the distro lockin you mention, debian's not a bad distro to be locked into. Stable's great for servers, sid's great for desktops, and there's even a multimedia-oriented distro around for people that work with that.

Libranet survives because it isn't commercial

[Anonymous Coward]

Libranet really isn't comparable to the other Debian-based distribution. Unlike Stormix or Progeny, the makers of Libranet have never tried for major retail sales, and make their money (I believe) from consulting.

No offense intended, but the reason that Libranet survives isn't that its makers are smarter than the people at Stormix and Progeny. The reason is simply that Libranet has never been commercial.

I lub debian

[Catmando]

I love debian and i'm recommending libranet to a friend right away! I don't care if my roommate calls me an 'apt-get whore'

Re:I lub debian

[vekotin]

Tell him you are, but that it doesn't affect your day job ;)

I'm looking forward to this as well, I nowadays take extreme pleasure from deleting red hat installations in favor of more functional ones. Good work Libranet!

Only available on CD?

[Nermal]

The 'download' link only lets you get ISOs for the previous version and says that version 2 is available on CD only. Doesn't the GPL say that they have to make it available for download?

Re:Only available on CD?

[Oswald]

By no means. The GPL says that if one chooses to distribute modified software, the source code must be made available as well. There can be a fee for the software, and even a fee for the source (not to exceed the price of the object or executable). Details here. There is no requirement to provide downloadable source; rather, the requirement is to provide a copy on some physical medium if requested (see this)

At least, that's what I make of it.

Re:Only available on CD?

[Anonymous Coward]

> The 'download' link only lets you get ISOs for the previous version and says that version 2 is available on CD only. Doesn't the GPL say that they have to make it available for download?

v2.0 will be available for download after they've made back enough to cover at least some of the development costs. It may be several months, but it will eventually be there.

Easy configuration..

[Ogerman]

So about the modifications to the standard Debian installer and the graphical configuration bits.. are they released under GPL? Then somebody in the Debian project needs to integrate them into the standard distribution, even if optional. Debian is great for newbies if you can just get them over the first hurdle.

Almost as good as...

[DA_MAN_DA_MYTH]

Why should I buy Libranet?

Simply put, this is the best desktop system available.

Bold Statement...

Re:The distro I would like to see..

[RGRistroph]

I suggest taking a look at floppyfw. They ripped out a lot of the rc.d stuff there to get to a simpler (well, easier to trace through and figure out) initialization scripts.

I would start with that, and install it on a harddrive, and gradually start adding things until you had all the necessary tools to compile and built a copy of it yourself. Trim down and consolidate the start scripts until you have something you like.

However, I suspect that you will find that the runlevel style initialization scripts are there for a reason. One does need some way to organize all that stuff. You can easily (well, a few weekends and evenings of piddling around) build what you describe. However, you will find that you are re-doing too much of the distro each time you add a package. If other people start using it, and adding packages that you never heard of (like some random database server or something) and start them up automatically, you will swiftly get pissed at the whole situation (especially when they send you email accusing you writing a broken linux or whatever) and decide that the init.d scripts weren't so bad after all.

And about the hundredth time you install something just to find out some arcane library needs and updated version, or the hundreth time you tell some other user that he can't install LyX without having xforms, you will also see the goodness of package system.

Check out a linux based on the BSD ports system, Gentoo I think is the most common one. Maybe that will give you enough to satisfy.

Another route is to stick with DOS, and get the Free Software Foundation's book and CD "GNU Tools for MS-Windows and MS-DOS." This is a set of all the standard GNU tools (emacs, perl, bash, gcc, sed, awk, latex, etc) compiled for DOS and put in a nice package with an installation program. I have purchased several copies of this from the FSF by mail order. If you want a copy of the CD, I may be able to get you the .iso of it, email me if you are insterested.

Oh and one last thing -- whoever modded the parent comment as a troll should be $rbtl'd or whatever it is, or have their account set to put all page-widening posts at +5 Insightful.

No, it doesn't...

[cr0sh]

All it says is that if you distribute the binary, you must provide the source - it says nothing about how that source is to be provided (if it was cost effective, they could provide it as one long printout, or a huge deck of punch cards, or on paper tape), as long as it is made available.

You can charge for that source code, but only a fee that would cover the cost of distribution, etc (so, in theory, they could print it all out and give it to you that way, then charge you for paper, ink, electricity, management fees, and shipping and handling - and be legit according to the license - I think the wording is there to prevent "gouging").

Typically, the GPL wants the code to be "with" the binary - ie, distributed at the same time, preferable on the same media as the binary - and that is what we typically see.

But if a company only releases a CD of the binary, they have to give the end user a 3 year term, minimum, to request the source code if they so want it. What is interesting about this clause is that you could distribute a binary only system, and given the proper docs (ie, including copies of the GPL, etc), leave it up to the users, those who care, to ask for the source - instead of just handing it to them whether they want it or not. I am not sure, but I think there is a grain of a valid business method in that...

GNU/Lindows

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you guys are slighting the intense effort and contributions the Free Software Foundation and the GNU movement have made towards protecting your freedom.

Please refer to it as "GNU/Lindows" in order to remind people that this is more than just software, it has a clear social objective of protecting the freedom of computer users.

Thank you.

Re: Progeny has contributed more ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... to this user's disappointment.

The evidence:

Libranet was out before Progeny, has a friendlier installer than Progeny, works straight out of the box (unlike Progeny, which IME had too many "crashy" apps), offers more intuitive (newbie-friendly) configuration and, finally, it has outlasted Progeny.

I'll let you, the jury, decide :)

Libranet is really nice

[Daimaou]

I have used Libranet since two versions ago. Yes, the installer is text based, but who cares. It's not like you sit and install the os every day. Once it's installed, it a very easy to use and powerful system.

Keep up the good work Libranet!!!

APT's available onother Linux distributions too

[Nailer]

I like APT but there's a couple of reasons why I stick with Red Hat - I like their current yet well tested AC kernels, kudzu, setup, installer and a couple of other tools. Its always nice to just buy a network card and install it by sticking it in my damned machine and turning back on - no hunting for which driver module matches the hardware. A lot of software (Open Source apps like FreeSWAN, closed source apps like Kylix) seem to be tested on RH before other Linux distributions.

Anyway, APT has been available for Red Hat for some time now and its how I update most o my boxes. There's a few good publically avaliable repositories and more on the way - namely all the Red Hat CDs, all the updates as they come out, FreshRPMs, and Gnomehide. I have around 2.8GB of (binary) software from 9 different sources on an APT repository I maintain at my workplace, all of which are tested against 7.2. Sure, 2.8 is less than 6GB (the amount on Debian repositories), but its got everythign we need - acroread, postfix, enhydra, kylix open edition, just about everything else.

There's also the fact that the ability to install RPM packages is part of the LSB, and alien doesn't seem to handle this reliably.

If you're interested, download apt packages from Freshrpms

There's a *reason* there's only one...

[Anonymous Coward]

And it has nothing to do with swords and quickenings either.

It's because the Debian distro is LAME, that's why....

Libranet is Evil

[modulus]

I don't know if anyone else has actually used Libranet, but I have. I actually PAID FOR a 1.9.1 cd, and installed it on my computer.

It was THE WORST distribution I had even used. Maybe apt-get is good in stock debian, but it worked for shit in Libranet.

Just thought I'd let you know.

Re:Libranet is Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

> I don't know if anyone else has actually used Libranet, but I have. I actually PAID FOR a 1.9.1 cd, and installed it on my computer.
> It was THE WORST distribution I had even used. Maybe apt-get is good in stock debian, but it worked for shit in Libranet.

?? I've got Libranet installed on four partitions on my machine, and apt-get works fine on all of 'em, including the ones upgraded to Woody and Sid. What kinds of troubles did you have (not just with apt, but with Libranet in general)?

Big bucks behind Progeny?

[Shanep]

My favorite Debian based distro in GNU/Linux.

Libranet 2.0 boxes

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!