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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. :)
...is the standard Debian installer that bad? Hmm -- well, yeah.
-- What do you need?
-- Gnus. Lots of Gnus.
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. :)
I am Jack's HTTP Server
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.
Is Linux really as good as I have heard?
It's better.
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"
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.
I've read a post here asking why bother with a commercial Debian distro, let me explain:
e t1 90/index.shtml
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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/libran
Debian for BeOS users:
http://tinyplanet.ca/pubs/debian/html/book1.htm
Reasons I like Debian: (Shameless self-promotion)
http://www.moses.cx/reviews/debian/debian.php
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.
"Good is our Linux distribution! Powerful it is!"
Thanks for the update, Yoda.
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.
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
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.
/usr/bin/perl' and there it was. From that moment on, I have never touched an RPM.)
/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.
/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.
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
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
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
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