Lunar Linux 1.0 Released

Ivan writes "Lunar Linux 1.0 was released today. It's a source based distribution, with gcc 3.2 and the latest versions of packages such as Mozilla 1.1, OpenOffice.org 1.0.1 and GNOME 2 and KDE 3. From the about page on their website: 'In the beginning Lunar was a fork of Sorcerer GNU Linux (SGL). The fork occurred in late January to early February of 2002 and was originally made up of a small group of people who wanted to collaboratively develop and extend the Sorcerer technology.' Download the ISOs here."

Comments

first post cereal

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't get enough of that Sugar Crisp... Sugar Crisp... Sugar Crisp

Lunar Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

use windowsxp it is teh better

Re:Lunar Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

no no .. i think thats luna ... so lunar must be better cauze its a longer word.

Right on

[Slack0ff]

Another New flavor of linux release. Thats one step closer to a perfect world and one more slap in mr gates' face. Rock on Tux!

Re:Right on

[Anonymous Coward]

A perfect world where every single person is running a different and incrementally incompatible version of linux? You can take that perfect world and shove it! If there is any OS god at all, Red Hat will stomp all other distros down to 1.0% share and we can actually make with the future progress of Linux!

Re:Right on

[Slack0ff]

without competeion (sp) within the linux subsection of oses redhat could be lazy and end up like a poor m$. So competion (sp) is what makes linux special.

Re:Right on

[Anonymous Coward]

What does the Unix world need competition for? Unix has basically been the same for a quarter-century.

Re:Right on

[data_the_android]

If you want an OS god, look at Microsoft. All software for Windows is very standardized. Fine, blame developers for not using Windows Installer. But InstallShield is also from Microsoft. Redhat has garbage package managment also. Gentoo has the best package managemnt I've seen so far. And it's based on the BSD ports tree. All of the different versisions allow people to make products, and allow others to imporve upon theose products. That's waht open source software is all about. But let's dump all that and have an open source monoply. Right on.

Penguins! Argh!

[mdechene]

They're evolving! Now they can survive in extremely low pressure environments without oxygen! Argh! Sorry, that picture on their webpage cracks me up.

my only question is ..

[frodo from middle ea]

Download the ISOs here.
why ?

Re:my only question is ..

[ComaVN]

'Cause there's pr0n on it?

Wow!!!

[FreeLinux]

These guys are even better than Red Hat. Their mirrors are kickin and their announcement isn't even Slashdotted, yet. ;^)

Re:Wow!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

" Unable to connect to database PHPWEBLOG.
Make sure this database exists, then edit include/common.inc.php. " - main page is fscked though

Re:Wow!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Unable to connect to database PHPWEBLOG.

Make sure this database exists, then edit include/common.inc.php.

And I posted this about 5 minutes after the parent.

Re:Wow!!!

[gmhowell]

Your post is SOOOOO 15 minutes ago.

I'm now browsing at 0 looking for the karma whore who posted a copy of the page.

Not very similar to sorcerer..

[Suppafly]

'In the beginning Lunar was a fork of Sorcerer GNU Linux (SGL). The fork occurred in late January to early February of 2002 and was originally made up of a small group of people who wanted to collaboratively develop and extend the Sorcerer technology.'

It appears to be almost totally different now judging from the other info given on the site..

Re:Not very similar to sorcerer..

[auferstehung]

Really? From what I read it appears they just changed the command names. But I have to admit that appears to be a first: distribution themes.

I am glad to see another Linux release

[ModernGeek]

When we make more packaged linux distributions like these with KDE/etc, it will keep the linux community from being standardised and taken over. I am glad to see there are lots of options.

So would that be nicknamed "Lunix"?

[TheAwfulTruth]

(Apologies to Jeff K.)

Re:So would that be nicknamed "Lunix"?

[RailGunner]

Yes it would be Lunix, and it would allow you to connect to the "INTARNET", where you can do all your l33t hax0ring.

(For those of you who don't get the joke..)
http://www.somethingawful.com/jeffk

Download ISOs here!

[Anonymous Coward]

For those that didn't catch the link before it became slashdotted, here it is:

Name Last modified Size Description

Parent Directory 01-Oct-2002 09:19 -
ChangeLog.lunar 02-Oct-2002 20:01 1k
ChangeLog.moonbase 30-Sep-2002 22:50 13k
ChangeLog.theedge 02-Oct-2002 20:02 8k
ISO.Changelog 01-Oct-2002 09:37 8k
art/ 18-Aug-2002 20:05 -
distrowatch.txt 02-Oct-2002 19:32 2k
init/ 31-Mar-2002 19:14 -
lunar-20021001.iso.bz2 01-Oct-2002 09:30 89.3M
lunar-20021001.iso.md5 01-Oct-2002 09:19 1k
lunar.lsm 01-Sep-2002 20:57 1k
lunar.tar.bz2 02-Oct-2002 20:01 104k
lunar.tar.bz2.1 02-Oct-2002 19:01 104k
mirrors/ 26-Aug-2002 13:57 -
moonbase.tar.bz2 02-Oct-2002 20:02 552k
moonbase.tar.bz2.1 02-Oct-2002 19:02 552k
old/ 01-Oct-2002 06:52 -
testing/ 01-Oct-2002 09:30 -
theedge.tar.bz2 02-Oct-2002 20:02 106k
theedge.tar.bz2.1 02-Oct-2002 19:02 106k

Re:Download ISOs here!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah hahahaha! Mod parent up. That's classic.

Re:Download ISOs here!

[uberdave]

Are there any distributions that do not require an iso image download? Why not just download the source directly? You know, just a boot floppy and a fat internet pipe?

Re:Download ISOs here!

[osu-neko]

That's actually more or less how it works. You'll notice it's only an 89MB ISO...

Re:Download ISOs here!

[ncc74656]

Are there any distributions that do not require an iso image download? Why not just download the source directly? You know, just a boot floppy and a fat internet pipe?

Last time I checked, you could install SuSE that way...download and write some floppies (a boot disk and one or two disks with kernel modules for SCSI/network/etc. support), boot up, and install from an FTP server.

Re:Download ISOs here!

[data_the_android]

Actually I think more distros dont require an ISO then those that do. Gentoo doesn't, nor does Debian. Gentoo always need a nice net connection becuase u download everything in the package managemnt system. Also last I checked Redhat was installable by booting and downloading the rest. Gentoo and debian are really are really the best for this becase in the install you only set up the system and nothing else. I'd presume Socceror and Lunar are like that, but have no experience with either.

Re:Download ISOs here!

[arglesnaf]

Debian. 1 boot floopy is all you need.

Re:Download ISOs here!

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be if you have a 2.88MB fdd (I have some, just no media), otherwise it's 2 disks.

Re:Download ISOs here!

[JohnFluxx]

Nah, you can do it with one disk.
If you have dos installed, you can do it with zero, by copying the files to the harddrive and booting from there.

Re:Download ISOs here!

[aallan]

Last time I checked, you could install SuSE that way...

...and RedHat, you just need the right boot floppy.

Al.

Re:Download ISOs here!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, I've typically used the 60mb CD boot to start it =)

Re:Download ISOs here!

[Rick the Red]

I like ISOs, simply because it's easier for me to download one file than it is to download dozens. Nobody seems to use tarballs anymore... I guess they're trying to support folks with dialup connections who want to download one file a night for a month, but I don't work that way.

And while I'm offtopic, I wanted to use Linux From Scratch but it isn't (from scratch), it's from an existing Linux installation, on an empty partition. I coulda loaded RedHat first, but my laptop doesn't have room for RedHat and LFS, so I tried Gentoo. It didn't support my (PCMCIA) network card. Being offline kinda stops Gentoo dead in its tracks. In all fairness to Gentoo, Mandrake didn't support my network card either, so I'm back to RedHat. I guess I'll try Lunar Linux and see if it can finally free me from Corporate domination of my desktop.

Re:Download ISOs here!

[shepd]

>Are there any distributions that do not require an iso image download?

Slackware can still be installed from floppies, if you really want to. Too bad it doesn't support 5.25 " 1.2 MB floppies anymore. What am I going to do with those drives now?

Re:Download ISOs here!

[WhiteDragon]

I wonder how much work it would require to hack it onto 1.2s... ie surely there are some files bigger than a single 1.44 so there must be a file splitting mechanism in effect. I bet it would be easy to script it.

Ah but the question is

[Salsaman]

Will Lunar Linux run on Sun hardware ?

Re:Ah but the question is

[danimrich]

Yes, but only during solar eclipses.

Re:Ah but the question is

[jetlagQ]

yes but only with the eclipse window manager...

Re:Ah but the question is

[municio]

What about Eclipse and StartOffice???

Re:Ah but the question is

[data_the_android]

Gentoo will run on SPARCs. I'm guessing Lunar should becuase it's source based, and as a reslut, as long as gcc is avalible for the platform, it should work. I can only guarntee that gentoo will.

Re:Ah but the question is

[Anonymous Coward]

we are working on getting it running on alpha'a and ppc computers

Re:Ah but the question is

[haggar]

And don't forget.. Mars!

I'll consider it.....

[mdechene]

When their server is running off of their own distribution.

Re:I'll consider it.....

[Slack0ff]

LMAO THERE RUNNING REDHAT ON THERE OWN SERVER? Why you looked already doesnt bother me as much as that! well atleasst its not like a win nt 3.5 server or somthing wreched, there still being truthful towards the mother land (linux)

Re:I'll consider it.....

[dildatron]

I tend to disagree with your line of thinking. For a big company like Microsoft, or even a smaller one like RedHat, then some customers might expect this. But, you need to think about the smaller companies.

If I have a linux distrobution, and I want to have a decent webserver with great uptime, the cheapest solution is probably not to host my own servers. One can select between a myriad of online hosts that already have the generators, UPS, backup systems, redundancy, and a fat pipe. So, clearly, if they are not running their own distro to serve web pages, I don't think it's a good deal.

While it may be expected of large companies to 'prove themselves', in a situation like this it would likely just cost more and deter from actually improving the distro and paying the workers.

Re:I'll consider it.....

[*xpenguin*]

I'll consider it when their server is running off of their own distribution.

Ever considered that they might be running on some dedicated server physically far away on which it's not worth the time to reinstall?

Re:I'll consider it.....

[dildatron]

Translate: "I don't think it's a good deal" to "I don't think it's a BIG deal". Ooops.

Re:I'll consider it.....

[Slack0ff]

Yes that is a possiblility. While they were developing there on os they had to have a platform they used, i guess redhat is it and i bet within the next 6months they are running on there own distro. So let me take back my earlier reply.

Re:I'll consider it.....

[mdechene]

If I have a linux distrobution, and I want to have a decent webserver with great uptime, the cheapest solution is probably not to host my own servers. One can select between a myriad of online hosts that already have the generators, UPS, backup systems, redundancy, and a fat pipe. So, clearly, if they are not running their own distro to serve web pages, I don't think it's a good deal.

Yeah, but, it doesn't look like they're running a professional organization here, yet. If I making a distro with a few friends or other interested people (and their list of contributors if I recall was under 10 people....but the page is /. right now so I can't check), then I'd sure want to have my own server running on my own distribution. For bragging rights if nothing else.

Re:I'll consider it.....

[Slack0ff]

Yeah but mabey they just havent had the chance to. I mean they probally just finished up and havent had a chance to with the big rush to get there product on the market.

Re:I'll consider it.....

[jbrocklin]

Actually, the list of contributors isn't quite accurate in my oppinion. I have been using Lunar for about 3 months now, but you won't find my name on the contributor list because I haven't really done much of the coding for it - I've been using it and trying to find issues with it. And I know there are a more out there like me who aren't on the contributor list. So, while there are the 10 or so dedicated individuals, there are others who were simply using the "pre-release" versions on a daily basis. I have to say its a great distro.

--Joe

Re:I'll consider it.....

[LinuxInDallas]

No one would expect a business to be running a beta version of a Linux distro as a webserver. That said, and considering that they JUST released version 1.0 of their distro, I would not expect them to be running their own stuff yet. Now maybe in 6 months if they still aren't that could be another story.

Re:I'll consider it.....

[data_the_android]

Well, gentoo does, and its not a large company. Gentoo has several servers all running gentoo. Why shouldn't Lunar?

Re:I'll consider it.....

[Anonymous Coward]

The Gentoo forums as well as their web server runs Gentoo as well as a few RSYNC mirrors.... I know of one RSYNC mirror running the latest Gentoo (1.4_rc1). Most RSYNC mirrors also share duty with ftp mirroring for other software projects.

gotta love the M$ add

[Anonymous Coward]

that pops up right in the middle of this story...

M$ small business server will save your life...
Can the OSDN get a wee bit more hypocritical ?

Re:gotta love the M$ add

[E_elven]

Can the OSDN get a wee bit more hypocritical ?

1) OSDN gets money from Microsoft 2) No-one on this site will actually care about the ad (in the sense of migrating over). Conclusion: MS loses money, OSDN gets some, and everyone is happy :)

Re:gotta love the M$ add

[Slack0ff]

Yeah anyone readed this story who can be converted with one pop-up ad needs to start getting there news on a site like www.aol.com

source based distros make no sense

[tps12]

Source based distros strike me as a little silly. There are only two major CPU manufacturers, each with a handful of models. Only three or four companies make most motherboards. Creative has a de facto monopoly in the sound card market with it's Live! series, and there are only a couple different video chipsets. Everything else conforms to well-known standards, and is hidden behind kernel drivers anyway. To top it off, extremely few applications benefit from any kind of CPU-specific optimization, and almost all of these (mostly things like mp3 and other media players) can be downloaded as optimized binaries. A simple custom kernel can be built in a minute or so on a newer machine, and acheive 99% of the speed gained by an entirely optimized distribution (which is pretty tiny to begin with). Does anyone really think that gzip cares whether it's running on an AMD or an Intel chip? Source based distros are great for "1337" case-modders with no knowledge of software or Linux internals and who have way too much time on their hands. For anyone else, they're just a waste of cycles. I for one will be glad when this fad dies out.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[jukal]

Here's good stuff about source based distributions, and comparisons to binary based. Basicly, if you install your operating system "once" and use it for say atleast 12 months, the cycles used during setup are not "wasted" - the bonus you get from it during the lifetime of your setup is significant.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[odyrithm]

I blame www.linuxfromscatch.org myself, it reminds me of www.happyhacker.org .. remeber that?

Re:source based distros make no sense

[bkjoegold]

I have to disagree with you. I should preface this post by saying I am a Gentoo user.

Here are two (of I'm sure many more reasons)

If you look at the ISOs that you get from Red Hat for example, they are for i386 arhcitectures. This is a least common denominator approach. It will run on any 386 or better processor. Those with a P4 will not get to utilize P4 specific enhancements.

The other reason I like a source based distro like Gentoo is that I can install only those apps that I want and configure and compile in the options I want. I don't have to rely on the makers of a bloated distribution to make those choices for me. They are shooting to please the majority of people with a single release.

The full distributions like Red Hat and Mandrake are quick and easy installs and great for probably the majority of users BUT if you want to try a fully and easily customizable and optimized distro, try a source based one.

Plus emerge rocks :)

Joe

Re:source based distros make no sense

[dildatron]

If you think the whole thing is silly, run a source-based distro and compare it to an identical system with another distro with the same software.

There is quite a noticable difference in the bigger packages like KDE, Gnome, X, etc. just because it is optimized for your hardware.

Agreed, it more than most people want to do, but there really is a difference. The question is whether a noticable speed increase is worth it. TO most it simply is not. (Espcially on supder-duper fast modern hardware).

Re:source based distros make no sense

[Your_Mom]

Well, Source based distros are a just an extension of what some people (like myself) do. I try to compile everything from source. I hardly use binaries, IMHO they are not worth the effort. I've run into numerous problem where a certain library a program is expecting is one patchlevel behind what it was compiled with and it doesn't work, while when I compile it, it works fine. Source also lets me shove everything where I want it to go, if it doesn't support that option, let me plow through a couple of config files and do it myself. I've run into less problems with source then using binaries. I don't use gentoo, I like my slack, but I've been tempted to toss it on a spare machine sometime. I'm also debating downloading this, since I've already download 3GB of ISO images today.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh?

By that reasoning we should all be running Windows XP and get rid of Linux altogether. After all, it's just clock cycles we're talking about.

The best thing about source based distros (IMHO), it the ability to 1 - discover how things really work, and 2 - modify them to better suit your liking. Obviously you haven't stumbled across any reasonably hard problems lately.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[gmhowell]

I have a 2.4 P4. I have the cycles to waste. No idea whether it is the P4, the custom compiles, the preemptive kernel or what. But the thing is damn quick.

Too bad the hard drive is utter shit.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[amorico]

My question though is why begrudge someone the pleasure of working with a tool that they enjoy? I tried gentoo and I liked it. I still use suse but using gentoo made me understand a lot more about my system.

The crux of your argument is that source distros don't realize enough speed benefit to make it worth your while. Be that as it may, people use them for reasons other than speed: increased understanding, sheer boredom, quite granular customization, and a desire to be closer to the internals of their operating system. You may not care about these things either, but why be upset that others do.

It harms you in no way that people use source distros. You should be happy that people are enjoying free software and possible learning a lot.

-A

Re:source based distros make no sense

[Junta]

Speaking as a Gentoo/PPC user, there is definite benefit in source based distributions.

The 'two major CPU manufacurers' are not the only ones that matter, for one. They hardly make a difference between each other. There is Sparc, Mips, PPC, Alpha, and other architectures. Mostly source based distributions who don't rely on paying to support what they allow can more easily adapt to many different platforms, not just 'AMD or Intel'.

Secondly, it isn't merely about getting things installed on your system or squeezing every last optimization in, it is about installing it the way you want it. Binary packages are compiled with certain #defines and linked against libraries of other packages which you may not care about. For example, mozilla compiled against gtk or gtk2. xchat with or without Gnome support, gaim with or without gnome support. Freetype with or without the patent infringing bytecode interpreter. With binary distributions, they are forced to make decisions about what the best way to proceed is, and most often the answer is to compile with support for everything and require everything as a prerequisite, even if the source only optionally supports another piece of software. With Gentoo, I define USE flags and emerge, and it figures out dependencies on the fly and passes the right options to configure and applies the right patches to get the featureset I want, with as little of the optional cruft as possible.

Related to the previous point, the performance boost is not as negligible as you would think. First off, the compiler optimizations and omitting debug code (useful for support and development, so often included) do help significantly on their own. Add to this that packages aren't carrying baggage from other unwanted and unused packages unnecessarily. This also saves on drive space and, more importantly, memory.

Sure, installing goes from being measured in minutes/hours to hours/days depending on what you need, but the process requires little intervention and once started, you can walk away and do other things. The time spent running these compiles is the price to pay for very good benefits.

Of course, your post has troll written all over it, but it in part reflects some real concerns people have about source based distributions, so I think it is worthy of a response..

Re:source based distros make no sense

[corrosiv]

They make great sense when you have everything distributed from one core CVS tree, thus any snapshot of the tree will give you a choerent OS (if it is properly managed that is). That's the FreeBSD method, and IMHO it's fantastic. You shouldn't ever get a kernel & userland that are out of synch with each other. Given how many Linux distributions are packages taken blindly from all over and then duct-taped together I think this is a step in the right direction. Centralized control enforces coherency.

Now you gotta break the users out of "Linux freak mode" where they read freshmeat every day and upgrade individual items by hand simply to have the latest versions. "You'll get the new kernel when the core group says it's ready and not before!"

I use FreeBSD for this reason. Linux got to be a headache with multiple independent development projects moving at breakneck speeds such that it was impossible to build a coherent system at times. I gave up with RedHat 5 and haven't looked back. I don't need the latest version of everything. What I need is a reasonably recent working version. I'll let the FreeBSD core team work out all the integration headaches and I'll take the OS as a cohesive unit as opposed to managing all that stuff by hand. You gotta love "cvs update; make buildworld; make buildkernel; make installkernel; make installworld"

Re:source based distros make no sense

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly, im sick and tired of deb's requiring emacs or vi for NO reason.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[Flarelocke]

The reason is how easy it is to add software that your distro hasn't thought of. In most cases with Sorcerer and forks thereof, it's just a matter of making a small file that tells where the source tarball is located, and the defaults do the rest. You don't even have to figure out what files it installs because a daemon watches the installation and records the files it installs.

Updating software is a matter of changing the version number in a small file(the source location usually includes $VERSION). Changing from stable to unstable development versions is quite easy--modify the version number. Keeping the source available uncompressed or keeping the object files in case you update frequently are command line options.

If you know how to code, problems are easier to fix in a source distro than a binary(if not, though, they are more difficult).

Then there are optional dependencies. You don't need to download different RPMs if you can do without PHP's ability to create image on the fly.

In many cases, a source is a smaller download than a binary(exceptions being the linux kernel and Mozilla).

Re:source based distros make no sense

[Priyadi]

With almost any binary based distributions (except debian maybe), you have to wait for the next release to get updated software. For example, to update gnome under redhat 7.0 to the latest version you need to compile the thing yourself, breaking several other software in the process. Not to mention breaking your package management, forcing you to use --nodeps and/or --force almost every time using RPM. Later, after it is done, you upgrade to redhat 8.0, suddenly everything is not working, forcing you to reinstall from scratch.

On the contrary, under gentoo you can have the latest and greatest software without waiting for the next version. Everything just works and handled by package management. The only time you need to compile things without emerge is when the software you want is not yet available in gentoo portage.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[gentry]

I'm gonna speel. It's been building up for a while now and hell, someone might read it...

I'm currently running Gentoo/i386 1.4 RC 1. Now, I was quite happy with 1.2. Nice and quick, latest bells and whistles. 1.4 is nice and quick. And as unstable as you like.
I keep up to date with my emerges, avoid masked packages and the like. It still breaks. kdebase has problems. Mozilla 1.0 is still in the main tree and the default seems to be to compile it against gtk2. Snort was broken for a while.

They seem to want to avoid standard ways of doing things. Where are the rc?.d directories. Do I really want to spend time trying to understand a new system?. The --help for the gentoo tools is pages long. The speil you get when Linux boot has gone in favour of a black screen.

Flexibility is one thing, but I do have things I want to do with my systems. I don't want to have to build huge swathes of system again to fix a niggling bug.

I admire the philosophy behind gentoo, and I admire the skill with which the portage system has been crafted, but at the moment they're only good for geeks with, as the initial poster said, clock cycles to burn.

Having said all that, I've just been running RH 8.0 on my laptop and getting used to RPMs after have the flexibility is a bit of a slap in the face.

I would say that source based distributions are the way to go, sort of, but only when they're properly QA'd, meaning the time it takes for the latest packages to get to stable takes a long time (but heh, not Debian long!). And can they ever really be QA'd when you do what Gentoo does - heavy optimisations for a wide range of processors, building with the options you want?

What I'd like to see is a hybrid system. RH/Mandrake/Suse + a portage a like. Stuff compiled using portage can go to /usr/local, the rest is in the main /usr tree. Stability for the bulk with the flexibility you need without going trawling freshmeat/google for the program.

God damn, I've gone way off topic. I'll stop now.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[Anonymous Coward]

emerge is like always getting rpms that work with no dependency hell.

real beauty of gentoo is emerge update installs new sources removes old doesnt break anything i love it.

headaches of gentoo? try installing with out a connection :( no fun transfering a bunch of sources or lists of files you neeed between computers

Re:source based distros make no sense

[Negatyfus]

Debian is just the distribution for you, it seems! There's a reason their stable release is a bit behind, and it's not just the 11 architectures that have to be supported! You'll also love apt/dpkg.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[Anonymous Coward]

What I found mind-blowing is that people use source distro instead of using, say, freebsd.

Binary install. Then build from source. Package build from source. For years.

Why people would prefer a half-baked linux solution is hard to understand.

Cheers,

--fred

Re:source based distros make no sense

[sdowney]

They're i386 for instruction set, but i686 for selection of instructions. Actual use of i586/i686 instructions buys you very little on that architecture, and can be a negative on Athlons.

Now, you might be able to get another 2% of performance by compiling for your specific arch, and you can do that by recompiling.

Or you might not. A lot of high performance code is in asm, and that's independent of the architecture.

The configuration choices are a much better reason for building from source. The downside is that your installation is unlike all other installations.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[GuidoDEV]

Gentoo would suit you very well...when I was first introduced to FreeBSD I just loved the ports system. Then I tried Gentoo and realized how much better the Gentoo scheme (known as "portage") is...not to mention the way they handle runlevels/init scripts, config files in /etc, and just about everything else. Hands down the most coherent, logical system I've ever seen.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[Anonymous Coward]

I really like my freebsd ports system. Quoting [you] "realized how much better the Gentoo scheme is". What exactly sets it so far above freebsd in your opinion? Could you give some examples? I may give it a try if you are convincing.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[BlueArchon]

Yea, I could sure use a source distro, my current is waaay to slow...

~# uptime
1:05am up 27 days, 1:14, 2 users, load average: 0.14, 0.12, 0.20

Re:source based distros make no sense

[short]

wrt binary-distros customization: I see no problem there, vendors still distribute even the source packages and thus I use a lot of customized packages - I just edit its configuration in its .spec file, do a "rpm -bb project.spec;rpm -U project*" and I'm happy.
There must be some unique configuration of all packages being distributed to make the Q&A possible.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[MullerMn]

On the contrary, under gentoo you can have the latest and greatest software without waiting for the next version. Everything just works and handled by package management. The only time you need to compile things without emerge is when the software you want is not yet available in gentoo portage.

I would just like to add that in my experience if you must install something that is not handled by portage, the best way to do it is to write an ebuild for the software in question. After the first time you do it it only takes 10 minutes to produce an ebuild for most standard (ie. uses AutoConf/Make) compile processes.

The advantage of doing this is that your package will then be maintained by portage for you, and provided you specify it's dependencies correctly portage will prevent them from being removed and killing your custom installed software.

Cheers,

Andy

Re:source based distros make no sense

[johnnnyboy]

I too loved the FreeBSD ports system and wished Linux would have one.
Gentoo is finally it!

Instead of ports they call it portage.
To update your ports you would use:
emerge rsync;
to update everything you installed use:
emerge world;

I haven't read about something like make build kernel in Gentoo yet. What I do is get the latest source using emerge gentoo-sources;
then do the usual:
make menuconfig then
make dep bzImage blah blah.

its been great for me so far.

give it a shot if you like.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[GuidoDEV]

To synchronize your portage tree with the official Gentoo one:

# emerge rsync

To install GNOME:

# emerge gnome

To update all of your packages to new versions:

# emerge -u world

To remove all of the *old* versions of the packages updated by the last command, since they are protected until "cleaned" out:

# emerge -c world

To forcibly remove a package:

# emerge -C $PACKAGE_NAME

To "pretend" you're running a given command:

# emerge -p$ADDITIONAL_FLAGS $PACKAGE_NAME

**

There are far too many conveniences to list them all so far as emerge goes, but those are just a few. Other conveniences:

The portage system (emerge, ebuild, etc.), when installing files to /etc, does not by default overwrite any config files--so you'll never lose your favorite config file in /etc again. Instead, it write the file to the same directory, with the prefix like ._cfg0000_ for instance.

Updating your default runlevel is amazingly easy:

# rc-update del telnetd default
# rc-update add sshd default

Each rc-script has a "dependency" function which relates it to other rc-scripts (for instance, "checkroot" must run *before* all other rc-scripts; or the mail server courier must run *after* all its components).

The default Gentoo kernel is based off the Alan Cox tree, and thus includes support for things like xfs, jfs, grsecurity, etc. Very convenient, and I have to say that xfs rocks. ;-)

The list of cool features like these just goes on and on...if you go to the Gentoo website there'll be plenty of info there.

I'm still a fan of FreeBSD, but I have to say that Gentoo's

Re:source based distros make no sense

[CableModemSniper]

A lot of high performance code is in asm, and that's independent of the architecture.

Huh? How the !@#$ is asm indepentdent of the architechture?????

Re:source based distros make no sense

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably almost fooled someone. =)

Re:source based distros make no sense

[ctar]

Everything just works and handled by package management. The only time you need to compile things without emerge is when the software you want is not yet available in gentoo portage.


This is the main reason, for me at least, for using Gentoo. After using RedHat and Mandrake for several years, this is the first time I have ALL my apps working properly, and I'm actually USING my system (not just f'n around with it). The dependency management and package installation just works.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[data_the_android]

Source-based distros let you do more then optimize for ur proc. With a source-based distro, you can put on other flags, such as things to omit the frame pointer, which prevents debugging on most procs, but lets you have faster code. There are a lot more choices you can make in a source-based distro then your processor. Or at least in gentoo.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[Anonymous Coward]

OK! Thanks for your detailed response. Gentoo does indeed appear to have avery good feature set.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[Anonymous Coward]

gcc does _NOT_ take advantage of the new instruction set in Pentium Pro, etc. The architecture optimization still suffers, as a result.

Re:source based distros make no sense

[__past__]

To synchronize your portage tree with the official Gentoo one:
# emerge rsync

# cvsup /etc/cvsupfile

To install GNOME:
# emerge gnome

# portinstall gnome

To update all of your packages to new versions:
# emerge -u world

# portupgrade -a

To remove all of the *old* versions of the packages updated by the last command, since they are protected until "cleaned" out:
# emerge -c world

Not sure what this does, but looks a litte like portsclean.

To forcibly remove a package:
# emerge -C $PACKAGE_NAME

pkg_deinstall -f $PACKAGE_NAME

To "pretend" you're running a given command:
# emerge -p$ADDITIONAL_FLAGS $PACKAGE_NAME

$ANY_COMMAND -n $OTHER_ARGS

I guess, for me emerge won't be the reason to switch from FreeBSD. (Nor the others you mentioned.) :-)

Re:source based distros make no sense

[GuidoDEV]

Yeah, like I said I'm still a fan of FreeBSD. I just really, really wish that it had the filesystem support that Linux does...I really miss that when I'm working with FreeBSD machines. In particular, I heard something about someone working on journaling for UFS (has this come to fruition yet? haven't used FreeBSD in a while...)--this would be an awesome improvement to FreeBSD. Running fsck can really suck... ;-)

/. needs another section

[jacoby]

This is desperately needed: YAFLD.

Re:/. needs another section

[CoolVibe]

Yet Another Fine Linux Distribution?

Re:/. needs another section

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, riiiight. The F stands for Fine. Sure. uh-huh.

Re:/. needs another section

[jacoby]

Exactly.

hardly a new thing

[odyrithm]

I hardly see the point of anounching this, the distro is nothing new and if people wanted to find another source based distro they would go to distrowatch..

Read the comments under the announcement...

[jvmatthe]

First there were the distro wars.

Now there are the source distro wars. :^)

Anyway, I thought this was a humourous comment under the announcement on the Lunar site that indicates just how far out of the mainstream source distro geeks are:

Actually, lunar requires very little documentation to install. If you actually went through the install process you should see that. Also, the initial MOTD tells you to read a manpage that describes the features and commands to a first time user.

Oh! I get it. First I burn the ISO and then boot and that gets to the MOTD. Then it points me to a man page which details lots of little command line programs that I use to install. That's gotta be the ultimate in user friendly! :^D

Sorry, but it just made me laugh out loud when I read how easy [sic] it was. For what it's worth, I struggled through several Gentoo installs and, except at work where we have system administered by someone else, I use Gentoo and love it. Even "converted" one of my friends recently. I know what it's like to have to do obscure things, but sometimes it takes a comment like the above to realize just how "deep" I've fallen into the world of Linux geekdom.

Re:Read the comments under the announcement...

[Mattsson]

Hehe... One of my favorites is cd-rom drives that ships with all documentation, etc, on a... You guessed it. CD-ROM! =-)

Re:Read the comments under the announcement...

[Verloc]

I dunno about 'struggle', if you read the installation instructions on the gentoo site it's a breeze... I was actually surprised and happy about how easy Gentoo was to install.

Re:Read the comments under the announcement...

[abischof]

I've heard good things about Gentoo, and I'm quite tempted to try it. I'm currently a Win2k user, but I plan on trying Linux within a couple weeks. Though I'm quite comfortable with Windows (including the command line), I'm a bit of a Linux newbie. So, do you think Gentoo would be worth trying for me?

I wasn't quite sure whether your post was pro-Gentoo or anti-Gentoo ;). At one point you say "I struggled through several Gentoo installs" yet you "use Gentoo and love it"? (I'm not trying to be snarky, just honestly curious).

Re:Read the comments under the announcement...

[jvmatthe]

Well, by struggle I mean two things:
- get my laptop's PCMCIA to play nice with their ISO image
- get their kernel to work without having SMP turned on

This is back from the 1.0_rc6 days, and rc6 worked just great with my system. Unfortunately, the way they had their kernel set up, you had to do a "make clean" right off the bat or you got something that didn't work quite right unless you left SMP turned on. Don't ask me why...that's just how it was.

Furthermore, when they went to 1.0 (final) it wasn't clear to me that an upgrade would be a clean process. So I instead chose to install again, and their 1.0 ISO would cause a really nasty kernel hang when trying to enable PCMCIA on my laptop.

From there I used my 1.0_rc6 disc to get the system half-working and then used the 1.0 final disc to finish everything up. I know it sounds odd, but it worked, and everything has been smooth since.

Then there were a few compile problems, probably related to me using the gcc 3.x profile, but I worked around those too.

Struggle may sound harsh, but that's how it feels when you're getting what look like serious problems and the help online isn't helpful enough.

Note: Gentoo devs and mailing lists have seemed generally helpful, from what I've experienced, but I don't think they were nearly as helpful in March 2002 as they are now.

In case people read this and not my other followup, yes, I'm positive about Gentoo.

Re:Read the comments under the announcement...

[jvmatthe]

I recommend Gentoo for people who want to be closer to the internals of their systems but don't want the "gasoline poured into gaping head wound" pain of Linux From Scratch. LFS is great for doing once for the experience, but since it pretty much lacks a packaging system (back when I tried it), it's not for me. I'm willing to do some babysitting of my system, but not at the level that LFS requires.

Gentoo promises a close working relationship with your system, access to the very latest packages, and a growing and generally helpful community.

Try it out: Gentoo home

See my other post in this thread for why I had problems with it initially.

Re:Read the comments under the announcement...

[Hard_Code]

If you are coming from Win2k without much prior Linux or Unix experience I was seriously suggest installing RedHat or Mandrake. Give it a whirl for a month or so to get familiar, then when you think you are 'leet enough (i.e. your pain threshold has risen enough), try out a source distro.

I haven't tried out a source distro yet (it seems the only occasions I have to install Linux happen to be pretty bizarre network installs...so I usually just opt for RedHat because this is the *only* distro I've been able to get to install easily in these circumstances).

Re:Read the comments under the announcement...

[jbolden]

I'd second the above poster's advice; and recommend Mandrake over RedHat. I have used source distributions but if you are new to Unixes there are just going to be way too many assumptions of knowledge in the documentation. For example it might say stuff like "configure startx with your favorite window manager" and you:

a) don't know what startx is
b) don't understand what it is doing
c) don't know what a window manager is
d) don't have a favorite

Re:Read the comments under the announcement...

[horza]

I had all kinds of weird problems when I installed Gentoo, but the #gentoo gang on IRC helped me knock them down one by one. Fantastic online support. Now also a Gentoo addict.

Phillip.

Re:Read the comments under the announcement...

[mejh]

I would say try one of the more newbie-friendly distros like Red Hat or Mandrake first, and then once you've used it a little while (days or weeks), and feel you want to learn a bit more of how Linux actually works, where certain files are kept, and command-line syntax, try Gentoo.

The Gentoo install is, these days, reasonably easy, but I wouldn't recommend trying it before you even try/use any other distro.

That's IMHO anyway...
Mark.

Enough?

[term_0z]

Isn't there enough Linux distributions already?

Re:Enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently not.

Yet Another Pointless Linux Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish people would stop creating their own pathetic little distributions and would focus on making current distributions better.

I mean, it seems like the reasons for the existence of Lunar Linux (on their "about" page) are pretty weak. It's like a distribution for the heck of it.

People should be required to have a good reason for making a new Linux distribution. It just seems silly unless there's a good reason, because, more than being useful, it lends fires to Microsoft's argument (others argue this, too) that too many Linux distros will cause incompatibility problems and result in something like the Unix incompatibilty problems that caused that market to fragment.

I am right. Don't bother responding to me.

Re:Yet Another Pointless Linux Distribution

[odyrithm]

I totaly agree, if u look closer you see its just a distro to help some dewd jump up his ego.. pretty sad as all hes managed todo is build a linuxfromscratch and package stuff... woooooo

Re:Yet Another Pointless Linux Distribution

[DThorne]

I agree with you inasmuch as the world doesn't need this at all, however it seems pointless to me to wish these people refocused elsewhere. They aren't being paid to do it - they do it cuz they *want to*. They won't refocus on what you want unless you're willing to pay them!
I doubt these tiny little distros will have any impact one way or the other with Billy G. affairs...

Cheers

DT

Re:Yet Another Pointless Linux Distribution

[Xoid629]

reasons for the existence of Lunar Linux
There were reasons for the fork of Sorcerer. See this page on the Source Mage site. But no, last I looked Lunar Linux wasn't very clear about these reasons. People should be required to have a good reason for making a new Linux distribution.
If people were required to have a good reason to start OSS projects, we would never have got Linux in the first place. I won't even bother responding to the rest of your argument.

Re:Yet Another Pointless Linux Distribution

[Anonymous Coward]

If people were required to have a good reason to start OSS projects, we would never have got Linux in the first place.

Of course we would.

Linus created linux as part of his masters thesis.

He didn't just say "gee i think i'll make a unix clone in my spare time for no fucking reason".

mmmkay.

So?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet another linux distributions that adds nothing new...

why are all these distros appearing?

[Anonymous Coward]

why is there constantly a new distro? if sorcerer was so good, why not contribute to it? i remember them asking specifically for help on the distro...why make YALD (yet another linux distro)...just 'cause you can? i think the linux-on-the-desktop thing would proceed along a lot better if people would concentrate/contribute to a distro they already like, or atleast the one that's closest to what they already like, and then contribute to make it something that they really do like!

Re:why are all these distros appearing?

[Xoid629]

if sorcerer was so good, why not contribute to it? Aparently there was some problem with the Sorcerer licencing that started the fork.

Re:why are all these distros appearing?

[data_the_android]

These distros aren't designed for Joe Schmoe. They are for people that want specilized distros. They are niches in niches. But other then that, if there are not major chages, I think it should be contibuted to the source. If it's something entirely different, then it should be its own distro. But no matter what, these distros won't make linux more popular becuase they are designed for linux users.

Re:why are all these distros appearing?

[ender-]

Aparently there was some problem with the Sorcerer licencing that started the fork.

Exactly... The guy who wrote the original Sorcery stuff decided to cry foul and take his ball [sorcery] home, and re-release it as non GPL code.
The reasons for this are kind of drawn out so I won't go into them here.

But the end result was two forks of the distro, Lunar Linux, which I have not tried, and SourceMage which is what I use and love, and contribute to in whatever small ways I can. [Although personally, I hate the logo, but we can't have everything :) ]

Ender-

innovative Linux distributions

[cpeterso]

I'm glad to see some new innovation in Linux distibutions. Lunar Linux is completely unlike those other Linux distributions. It includes innovative new software that other Linux distributions do have, such as Mozilla, GNOME, KDE, gcc, and the Linux kernel.

Old Term New Term

[Hard_Code]

Old Command: rm -rf /
New Command: fakelunarlanding

Old Term: Kernel Panic
New Term: apollo13

Re:Old Term New Term

[Dirtside]

Old Term: Kernel Panic
New Term: apollo13

Hmm, so what happens if you get hacked?

SYSTEM ERROR: h0u5t0n, j00 h4v3 a pr0b13m: 4ll j00r r00t r b3l0ng 2 u5. h4w!

ISO Download

[viper21]

Does this mean that the guy from last week will now have 38 Operating Systems on 1 PC?

Since the lunar-linux site is probably bogged down at the moment, you can probably grab an ISO from:

DistroWatch

or

LinuxISO.org

Re:ISO Download

[Anonymous Coward]

Me thinks not. He didn't have Gentoo, so I don't think he'll take time with this once. Maybe he'll take a weekend to compile one of those monstors.

Lunar Linux is for weenies

[Anonymous Coward]

Real men use Debian.

Got burned...

[Junta]

Got burned by Sorcerer Linux before this offshoot started. Hope they improved on the system, but I'm a gentoo user now, and don't really see what could be missing...

If they are compiling in Ramfs still (Like Sorcerer used too), it is a horrible waste, the benefits are negligible compared to the pains in the ass it can cause and the limitations it must have to deal with under the circumstances. I thought RamFS would be cool, but there is not much of a difference on an operation the user rarely performs and one that isn't baby-sat. If you are already on the install-from-source mindset, you have given up the speed of, say, binary apt installs to gain what is needed in terms of speed at runtime (and customization).

Re:Got burned...

[MSBob]

How do I configure PPPOE on gentoo so I can install the rest of it? I'm serious. I tried gentoo and I got to the stage where I had to configure my networking and none of the docs told me how to do it if my network was a PPPOE dsl. I gave up but would like to try it again if they made it any easier...

Re:Got burned...

[Junta]

Never had to worry about PPPoE, but perhaps a search on the gentoo forums could help? I see one, a more detailed, but German one, and another here.

After that, I suppose I see the charm of other source based distros. Gentoo really isn't that intuitive on the installation for those unfamiliar with the guts of the software...

Re:Got burned...

[kjeldahl]

Luckily, the Gentoo 1.4RC version includes pppoe. It worked out of the box for me by issuing the command "adsl-start" before starting installation (try to ping a well known site to confirm you are online before continuing).

But yes, it was not document. I was just about to install it myself from a floppy when I noticed it was already there.

Re:Got burned...

[rrogers]

Using tempfs to compile is an option with lunar, but we don't recomend using it. Setting your gcc options within lunar to use -pipe is a much better option.

Re:Got burned...

[MSBob]

Thanks. I'm going to give 1.4 a try. Last time I tried to install gentoo was in the days of 1.2 I think... Hope it'll work for me too.

Re:Got burned...

[abischof]

I realize you're not an official Gentoo guy, but do you have any info on when 1.4 Final might be released? I'd like to give Gentoo a try (I'm currently a Windows user), but I figured that I'd have my best shot with Linux using a non-RC product ;).

Re:Got burned...

[Anonymous Coward]

it is a horrible waste, the benefits are negligible compared to the pains in the ass it can cause and the limitations it must have to deal with under the circumstances.

LOFL... that's the funniest thing I've ever heard. A Gentoo user complaining about stuff being a "pain in the ass for what it's worth"... Hmmm? Just like using Gentoo and wasting time compiling everything for mythical "performance boost"???

HAHA, you guys crack me up.

Re:Got burned...

[MWelchUK]

Sorry if I'm assuming to much, But you may be a little better off with something like Mandrake first. I started off with that and am building my knowledge up from there. Although if you feel you are ready for Gentoo go for it. I have the feeling it requires a little more knowledge than I had/have. I may be wrong...

Re:Got burned...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I'm an 8 year veteran of linux ( back in the Yygdrasil days!). I now use gentoo for the desktop and find it to be very, very easy to maintain via portage. The only thing they really gloss over is the USAGE variable, which newbies won't have a clue as to what to include. But after the install, I rarely have to touch my internals. I wanted to get closer, i suppose, but somehow find I need to check on them less after the switch! Perhaps they configure things well to begin.

Re:Got burned...

[jbolden]

The advantages of compiling depend on your CPU. For example Debian is optomized for 386. This hurts performance on Pentium 1s and 4s quite a bit but doesn't hurt the 2s and 3s much. Mandrake uses a Pentium 1 setup so unless you have a 4 this is fine....

Especially since the 4 doesn't have instruction reordering and optimizes very differently than the 1 source distributions aren't such a bad idea.

simpsons style

[Anonymous Coward]

guess i forgot to put the foglights in

More Variety

[j_kenpo]

This is a good thing. Without so many different flavors of Linux, people wouldnt be able to choose a distro closer to their personal preference. This is what makes Linux stronger than Windows, that and stability, security, free applications, ect. So im sure an all source version will fill someones niche. And if their careful, they wont even have to call it GNU/Linux....

Point of source-based distributions?

[koali]

The latest rage is to say that compiling your stuff is pointless, because the binaries are not that much faster than generic binaries.

Well, I really don't know, but I'm running Gentoo anyways... why?

Perhaps is that I like tinkering, and perhaps it's that I have too much spare time (although only some packages are time consuming, namely Mozilla and OpenOffice), but I find some advantages to source based distros.

After all, it's much easier for developers to provide packages for them. No need to support a zillion architectures. No need to choose ./configure settings (Gentoo's USE works very well). You can also make cvs packages available (that fetch the latest cvs version and compile it).

Even though I still consider Debian's apt (and esp. the quality of packages) superior to Gentoo (just a personal oppinion), Gentoo usually provides more modern stuff (for the reasons outlined before), but I have chosen to give Gentoo some time.

Certainly, the state of Linux distros is getting pretty interesting. Debian and Gentoo have worked perfectly for me. I keep hearing good things about SuSE and Redhat's newest releases.

Perhaps some of the myths about Linux are beginning to fall?

Re:Point of source-based distributions?

[photon317]

For me it's not about the 2% speedup (well in some cases it's a lot better for certain apps, but I digress...), it's about the ease of source modification.

You see, if I have a RedHat isntallation that uses an RPM of apache, and I decide I need to tweak the apache source a bit, it's a pain in the ass. I suppose if you get really used to using SRPMs it's manageable, sorta.

With Gentoo, it's real easy for me to add a patch to an ebuild and re-install - or to unpack an ebuild, edit the soruce in /var/tmp/portage, and then finish off the install with "ebuild qmerge ..."

And well, a bunch of other things, but I guess the overall point is that for the draw is the power over the system, not the speed of the binaries.

Re:Point of source-based distributions?

[iabervon]

It doesn't take very long to compile these days, and it takes as long as it ever did to read the documentation, so either way, it'll be ready for you to use before you're ready to use it.

I think the real advantage is being able to get the same package regardless of your library versions. So long as they're source compatible (and library providers generally try to make sure of that), the same source package will install on a huge number of systems which would require different binaries (if it links against 10 shared libraries, and there are 2 binary-but-not-source-incompatible versions of each, that's 1024 different binaries you'd need).

Re:Point of source-based distributions?

[p3d0]

I personally vouch for SuSE 8.0 over Red Hat 7.3. I haven't seen RH8 yet though.

At home I use Debian because I know how to make it just the way I want it. At work, SuSE is the best for configuring it different ways on hosts with different hardware and different purposes.

Re:Point of source-based distributions?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL... if you were using Debian it's as easy as "apt-get source ".

And bam! You got the same source that made the Debian package in the first place. So simple it's easy.

Unless you really like to just tinker with your OS (vs. getting stuff done), dicking around with Gentoo is a waste of time.

Re:Point of source-based distributions?

[duck_prime]

Certainly, the state of Linux distros is getting pretty interesting. Debian and Gentoo have worked perfectly for me. I keep hearing good things about SuSE and Redhat's newest releases.

Perhaps some of the myths about Linux are beginning to fall?

Yeah, like the one about how there are so many near-identical distros that people get confused and stay away from Linux altogether.

doh.

Re:Point of source-based distributions?

[photon317]

I really do like to tinker, I learn a lot from it. Debian is a noble cause, or at least they were, I don't keep up with it much anymore. Gentoo is a bit more bleeding edge, it suits me better. You can tinker and still get things done though. I tinker Gentoo on dev boxes, and deploy the results to Gentoo production boxes that are based on customized portage trees and customized ebuilds.

Why is this not modded down as flamebait?

[BigMeanBear]

moderators... do your job!!

Re:Why is this not modded down as flamebait?

[Junta]

I agree, but the moderators with the sense to see this feel so strongly on the matter they would rather reply than moderate :)

Add one more to the total

[gurnb]

Great, now that guy that was on TECHTV last week with the PC that had 39 O/S's loaded can break the 40 barrier.

This is like watching B.Bonds go for the HR record!

Why Lunar?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mainly because Lunar Linux and Sorcerer GNU/Linux aren't quite as difficult as Gentoo. More of the installation chores are automated. For example, while Gentoo expects the user to manually chroot and copy the system over from the CD to the root partition, Lunar and Sorcerer do this automatically. Also, optimisation is broken down into a series of easy-to-grasp choices (the optimisation setting for really fucking fast code is labelled clearly) rather than expecting the user to muck around with CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS.

Best of all, IMHO, it's feasible (though almost time-consuming as installing software through FreeBSD's ports system) to install Lunar on a machine using a dialup. As far as difficulty is concerned, I'd class Lunar between Slackware and Gentoo. Hope this helps a bit.

--
St. Matthew, Patron Saint of Cheeky Programmers

Re:Why Lunar?

[ignorant_newbie]

I don't know about you guys, but I like the gentoo install for 2 reasons:

1. I learned stuff i didn't know about the workings of my system, and

2. it sets the barrier to entry just slightly higher: In order to run it, you have to be able to follow instructions for long enough to complete the install (basically, all day). This serves to mostly keep whiners off the mailing lists.

I mean, come on. "Gentoo expects the user to manually chroot and copy the system [ hopefully you do this in the opposite order] over from the cd to the root partition". This is such a diffucult task. especially since it's spelled out step by step in the readme. I mean, having to remember a command long enough to hit alt-F1 and type it is just sooo hard.

Re:Why Lunar?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ga! Ga! Goo! Goo!

GO GENTOO!

(It's not difficult to enter commands that every single user will do the same, it's assinine.)

Re:Why Lunar?

[data_the_android]

I entirely agree with you. I have no objection to people who know nothing about computers running Lycrosis on Mandrake or some other distro. But gentoo is an advanced distro. Why should evreything be easy and automated? It's not hard to install gentoo, it just takes a while, as would any source distro. In addition to raising the bar a bit on the install, it allows you to fix your problems more easily, because you know what's going on. And if you konw what's going on and you want an automated install, you can make a shell script to do that really quickly. The gentoo system has one final advantage. Once you have everything setup, you can make yourself a tarball of it(and this can include all the software you want), and extract that next time you want to do an installaton.

Re:Why Lunar?

[yomegaman]

Your entire self-worth is based on running a distro that's "too advanced" (really too much of a hassle) for most people? That is really sad.

Re:Why Lunar?

[Rich0]

I can't say that I've tried Sorcerer or Lunar, but I can say that I was able to install gentoo over a 26k modem link (56k modem 20,000 feet from the central office - ugh - no DSL and connect speeds are horrible!) - and without using the precompiled version. Downloaded isos and installed over several nights.

I do make a point to replace:
emerge
with
emerge -f && emerge

Otherwise my dialup link will tend to timeout while kde is compiling and then it won't be there to download the next package. If anyone involved with gentoo development reads this it might be a good hint for the install FAQs.

Re:Why Lunar?

[Rich0]

Ugh - make that:
emerge "options"
with
emerge -f "options" && emerge "options"

Gotta love HTML parsing...

Re:Why Lunar?

[Cro Magnon]

How resource intensive is it? I remember reading on the original Sourceror site about needing a gig of RAM + swap, and 8G hard drive. Is that true for Lunar? If so, I'm SOL on my system.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet Another Fucktarded Loser Dude.

Re:No

[jacoby]

Yet Another Fucktarded Loser Dude.

They have a term for that already: Anonymous Coward

Kyle back at Sorcerer?

[krasni_bor]

It looks like Kyle, the original Sorcerer developer is maintaining it again at the original url sorcerer.wox.org. I gave up on following that soap opera a while ago, but what did I miss? Is Kyle back to running his Sorcery tree?

Re:Kyle back at Sorcerer?

[spencerogden]

You didn't miss any things. Supposedly he released a new and improved sorcerer under a closed source license. After doing that he put the site back up, but then stopped posting news to it. I guess he doesn't like people knowing what he is doing.

Re:Kyle back at Sorcerer?

[Xoid629]

It's back, but there is something weird about the licencing acording to the Source Mage (the other fork) site. On the other hand, I don't seen any mention of the licence on the Sorcerer site, so I'm not to sure about the details...

Re:Kyle back at Sorcerer?

[osu-neko]

Kyle is back running his own tree, apparently. The original tree he abandoned is now called Source Mage GNU/Linux (they changed the name to avoid confusion, after Kyle decided to jump back in again with his own tree).

Re:Kyle back at Sorcerer?

[Anonymous Coward]

the 'news' link in the sorcerer site is missing, but the page is still there... with no news: it looks like news are now sent via e-mail to you after you install (& register or whatever).

description

[Anonymous Coward]

--is this one all fulla pagan magic mystic hoodoo nonsense like where it forked from? I look at sourcerer, but no desire to learn "spells and incantations" right now. It's umm ok for hardcore wiccans and SCCA people I guess

distros

[august70]

It really amazing when looking at Distro Watch
How many distro's for Linux there are around. Some spouting optimised for 686 or desktop or server env. If you really are into Linux for the long haul, most of us usually do end up either rebuilding our packages or upgrading to a newer version before the actual vendor does. Be it because the package was fsck-up or because or some vendor favors a package verses another and doesn't look at the big picture of the software overall extending the software to it's fullest capabilities. my current dist is Arch Linux. Shameless plug I know, but this dist for the most part meets my current needs.

How can it be any good?

[drdanny_orig]

Version 1.0? I thought all linices had to be 8.x now? What the ?

Re: How can it be any good?

[Black Parrot]

> Version 1.0? I thought all linices had to be 8.x now? What the ?

This is one of the stylish new "mod 7" distros.

If it did,

[protein folder]

Would they want Soleil Moon Frye doing advertisements for it?

Mozilla

[Penguinoflight]

No, guys, Mozilla 1.1 is not the newest version, Mozilla 1.0.1 is the newest, yeah it's stupid, but 1.0.1 is actually a much better release.

Re:Mozilla

[Papineau]

For being involved in a translation of Mozilla, let me tell you this: Mozilla 1.0.1 and 1.1 have a lot in common over 1.0, but there's more features in 1.1. And if you really want the latest, go get 1.2a (although it's an alpha rather than a release).

Re:Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

Well there's an unofficial 1.2b now.

Sorcerer technology: Let it die folks!

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, come on, those Amiga fanatics continuely praying for the second coming is one thing. But hoping that something can be made from the Exidy Sorcerer is way beyond the bounds! It was a 4 MHz Z80 machine that needed lots of help even to run CP/M.

And if someone else names their product Genesis, I'm going to hurt them!

Benchmarks?

[tempest303]

If you look at the ISOs that you get from Red Hat for example, they are for i386 arhcitectures. This is a least common denominator approach. It will run on any 386 or better processor. Those with a P4 will not get to utilize P4 specific enhancements.

I keep hearing about these enhancements, etc, from Gentoo people, but are there any NUMBERS to back this up? Are there any tools have shown a definite decrease in application latency (especially in X) ? Will my kernel compile faster? Will Vorbis encode noticably quicker? WHERE'S THE BEEF??!? ;-)

Re:Benchmarks?

[be-fan]

It's not really something measurable by benchmarks. Most code (tar, gcc, etc) won't run faster. But in certain cases (like window rendering speed in X, image drawing speed in Qt, etc) the optimizations really kick in and it feels significantly faster. Unfortunately, there is no benchmark for UI speed (x11perf doesn't count because that's mostly HW accelerated) on Linux. There's one on Windows, so maybe that could be cloned?

Re:Benchmarks?

[Anonymous Coward]

so the only performance benefit from using P4 optimizations are unmeasurable? Now I see why it's worth all the time and hassle..

Re:Benchmarks?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know what you mean. Gentoo just "feels" so much faster on my poor little p2 266 than any other distro I run on it.

Re:Benchmarks?

[Drakonite]

Programs such as gzip, tar, ls, and many of those probably don't much of a boost. Any programs that use fuctions which sse or mmx would speed up would definatly get a speed increase.

This is far from a scientific benchmark, however....
I have a 400mhz celeron and 192 MB of RAM. I am running Gentoo with rigorous optimizations, and have a webserver (among other things) I've set up to load at boot.
My friend has a 1.2ghz pentium, with 256 MB of RAM. Running a basic installation of Mandrake (no added programs yet, no web server, nothing special)

Through many many times of helping them over the phone, I have discovered my computer is able to boot to console, manualy log in and start X, and then shut down X and my computer and start up again and log in and get into X a second time, all in the amount of time it takes his computer to boot up directly to X once.

This is far from scientific but my optimized computer booting twice as fast as a computer which should be more than twice as fast as mine proves to me the optimizations make a large enough difference for it to be worth it.

Re:Benchmarks?

[Papineau]

More probably just a customized kernel vs a stock kernel. Or your friend has more hardware (RAID, etc.) that needs to be initialized by the BIOS before booting. Compare a "ps aux" between both computers, and you'll probably see a lot more processes on his computer than on yours.

Re:Benchmarks?

[Tyreth]

Why for? The people who use Gentoo notice a difference. The two applications I immediately noticed a difference with was the Gimp and Evolution both started up quite a lot faster than under Mandrake or whatever distro I used previously. I'm talking like twice as fast start up, or more.

So whether or not there are numbers to back it up, I can vouch that there is a definate speed increase for certain tasks and applications that wasn't there before.

Re:Benchmarks?

[Quazion]

Your programs wont run much faster, although some will but thats just pure logic, dont need a benchmark to tell you that if you use special FAST instructions of your CPU that the result prolly will be faster, why the heck did they invent those instructions other wise ?.

But Gentoo on a Desktop feels a lot faster since it uses some kernel patches which make the proccess a lot better responsive (preemtp ?? forgot the name). I think this is what you feel right away.

Also what other allreaddy said and i can back up it starts application faster.

I have installed Gentoo on a P150 with 64MB and before that it ran slackware and latest X, but mozilla was too slow to use allthough it used XFCE as a desktop, now after 4x48 hours compiling it runs still slow, but faster ;-) its workable now. it even runs evolution (though it has very long start up times).

Re:Benchmarks?

[gl4ss]

and my honda feels so much better with http://www.electricsupercharger.com/

seriously though, things like this should be measurable in benches.. turn off hw accel while benching if you don't want it to interfere then..
and it's pretty absurd to say that you can't measure it but you can feel it, you'd think computer bench would notice the difference before eye.

(disclaimer-- i don't own a honda)

What exactly IS Lunar Linux all about?

[GuidoDEV]

Anyone know how Lunar Linux works, what their philosophy behind it is, etc.? Their webpage is less than informative (other than to say that it is a "source distribution"--which can be taken a lot of different ways)...the closest thing I saw to "information" was a comment which said that it was "better than Gentoo in some ways", but never specified how or why.

Anyone used it and knows how it works, etc.? Those of us who've never heard of it would appreciate a little information before wiping our hard drives...

Re:What exactly IS Lunar Linux all about?

[benp_85]

I guess that's the dig most people here have with it, it's nothing special, nothing new, it's just a regular source-based* distribution.
Personally, I don't see what the point is... it won't be as good as Gentoo, simply as it's younger, but then, it does no harm at all to build and distribute it. If that's what these guys wanna do, and others support them, leave them to it!!

*How many ways are there to interpret this?

-ben-

Re:What exactly IS Lunar Linux all about?

[GuidoDEV]

Well, one could argue that Redhat is a "source-based" distribution since they publish all the source, but it would certainly be a chore to build & install Redhat from the source RPMs!

Re:What exactly IS Lunar Linux all about?

[swb]

I guess that's the dig most people here have with it, it's nothing special, nothing new, it's just a regular source-based* distribution.
*How many ways are there to interpret this?

Let's see. There's "we built the binaries from source, you can't see it", "source is available", "source is installed with binaries", "binaries built with the source at install" and "no binaries, no tools, just the source". That's what, 5 possible ways to interpret it?

I'd guess they're in the second-to-last category, although when I did run linux I always wondered why there wasn't a distro with an install option that actually built the to-be-installed binaries from source at install time, or at least the kernel. It would have solved *some* of the problems of trying to build a universal kernel that supported everything out of the box.

Re:What exactly IS Lunar Linux all about?

[kc8apf]

Funny you mention that comment, I wrote it. We offer an easier installation than Gentoo. Rather than providing users the choice of how to begin the installation (tough for a new linux user), we simply say, use the CD. Is that necessarily better? For a new user yes. However, past the installation, users are confronted with configuration of things such as X without much help. Now, there are a few scripts provided to ease the setup of network interfaces (lnet) and to setup your mouse for GPM (lmouse), but most of the configuration is left up to you.

I personally see the future of Lunar linux going towards an easy to install, easy to configure source distribution (the built from source at install kind). I do not know how all the developers view the future of Lunar however.

But, as far as getting a base system up and running, Lunar is much easier for newer linux users than Gentoo.

Re:What exactly IS Lunar Linux all about?

[GuidoDEV]

How do the source and configuration tools work? I really am curious, it's just that there's no explanation of how anything works, how the install progresses, etc. I loved FreeBSD, then was wowed by Gentoo when I saw how superior (at least in my opinion) their system management tools are. It could be that Lunar Linux is even better still, but I have no way of comparing the two since there's no description that I can find of how Lunar Linux manages the preinstallation, installation, and postinstallation management aspects of the OS.

Re:What exactly IS Lunar Linux all about?

[Xoid629]

You might look at the Source Mage site and perhaps the origional Sorcerer site for more back ground. Some of the technical details should also be the same. The Gentoo site has some general information about sorce based distros.

But if you already know about the other source-baseds and just want specific information about Lunar, than yes, it does seem to be practicaly non existant.

Re:What exactly IS Lunar Linux all about?

[kc8apf]

Well, the pre-install is to download the ISO and burn it to a CD. Simply boot off the CD and follow the directions to actually boot (you can also use it as a rescue disk and we included memtest86 as well).

After you boot the CD, it'll present you with dialog based menus. Simply follow the prompts and you can partition and format your drives (optional) and you can transfer the Lunar install to the harddrive (the CD is actually the base install plus an extra script). After the install is transfered, you can configure your kernel and it is compiled and installed. Finally, configure your network interfaces and reboot.

Post-install is the brunt of the work. You have a fully usable system at this point, but only with the bare minimum of applications. You have a few text editors, the basic system utilities, the networking tools and startup scripts and a few various other packages.

If you plan on using a DHCP network connection, you will need to first install the dhcp client you chose during the network configuration. Typically this is dhcpcd. All you type is 'lin dhcpcd'. The source for dhcpcd, dhclient, the kernel, and pcmcia-cs are included in the install. This allows nearly anyone to get online to download the other sources they need (including wireless cards). After your dhcp client is installed, run /etc/init.d/network restart to enable the interface.

Otherwise, simply use the command 'lin' and a package name to install a package. If you want to know what packages are available, 'lvu section' lists the sections of the moonbase (this software database), and 'lvu section (section name)' lists the packages in that section. lin will prompt you for any optional dependencies and/or configuration options you want to use for the package and it's selected dependencies. After you answer all the questions, lin will download the source, compile it, create a log of the compile messages, create a log of the installed files, and finally create a archive of the binary files installed. Many of the things that happen during a 'lin' can be adjusted through the use of the 'lunar' program.

'lunar' provides a dialog based interface to configure the behaviour of the lunar packaging tools.

Also, if you decide you do not want a package installed anymore, simply type 'lrm (package)' and it will be removed.

That is the pre/during/post-install experience.

Re:What exactly IS Lunar Linux all about?

[GuidoDEV]

Thanks for the info--it sounds pretty capable. I especially like the idea of a dialog-based interface for configuring stuff...sounds useful for those users who are not as familiar with the innards of an OS or don't have the time/inclination for that type of stuff. I've always thought Gentoo should have a tool like that.

Lunix is taken

[yerricde]

LUnix is a UNIX clone for Commodore 64 computers, unrelated to GNU/Linux.

Re:me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Spread, please.

A great option for sysadmins

[cschmidt]

One of the huge benefits of source-based distros is for sysadmins -- you can easily set up an "install" server on the network that contains the source code modules you want. Then instead of pointing each workstation's install scripts to the repository on the distro's web site you point them to the internal server. That gives you a customized library of sources and each workstation's software has been specifically built for that machine.

Of course, for slower/older machines it would take a while to perform the install, but based on my experience with SourceMage the install can be done remotely and for the most part unattended.

(OT) Say-Gah!

[yerricde]

And if someone else names their product Genesis, I'm going to hurt them!

How about Mega Drive?

Poor Taste

[Anonymous Coward]

Browsing at 0!!!

-1 is where it is at.

With binary distributions e.g. Red Hat...

[Anonymous Coward]

...you get errata RPMS from updates.redhat.com and compile everything else from source making sure to put things under /usr/local (I do it by hand, although someone suggested using stow). To me that's the best of both worlds. YMMV.

GNU/Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on people, you should all know by now that it's supposed to be Lunar GNU/Linux 1.0.

More on the fork

[Apostata]

In case this wasn't posted yet, there are two major forks from Sorceror: Lunar (which I believe kept the main contributor of Sorceror), and SourceMage. SourceMage (who keep the nerdy witchcraft shtick happening) is approaching 1.0, which I believe is due for a Halloween release.

Link: http://www.sourcemage.org/

Sorceror was a cult-hit when it first hit the attention of Slashdot (late last year?). Many people raved about it, so I'm happy to see that both prongs on the fork are following the same tradition.

Re:More on the fork

[osu-neko]

For those who haven't kept up on the soap opera...

Actually, Source Mage GNU/Linux is not, technically speaking, a fork of Sorcerer. It is the original. However, after the Lunar fork, the old leader of Sorcerer, Kyle Sallee, blew a fuse over having his distro forked and declared Sorcerer dead. The problem being, of course, Sorcerer, being an open source project, is not only open to forking, it can't be closed down simply because one guy has decided to take his toys and go home. The rest of the Sorcerer team said, "Hey, no it's not!" and continued maintaining the Sorcerer distro. Then Kyle decided to get back into the game, and called his own tree (now covered by a closed source license to prevent forking) Sorcerer. The original Sorcerer team then changed their name to Source Mage GNU/Linux to avoid confusion and emphasize their commitment to an open source licence, and they drew up a debianesqe social contract.

Phew! Anyhow, that's the Readers Digest version of the story. Thus, confusingly, the distro that was called Sorcerer is now called Source Mage, the distro now called Sorcerer is a fork by the old project leader away from the rest of the old Sorcerer team, and the distro called Lunar is the original fork that caused all this confusion to begin with.

And now you have the rest of the story... :)

Re:More on the fork

[Apostata]

Thanks for taking their attention from my meagre attempt :)

Actually...

[fireboy1919]

afaik, Sorceror was first among source based distros. And this has a lot of that development team and source code. So they did do something new. But not very well - they didn't have hardly any documentation, and it killed them.

At least compared to the other choice - Gentoo linux, which has a userbase the talks to each other on the forums (imagine!) and they update much more frequently than all the Sorceror distros.

My thought when I read this was: they JUST made 1.0? What took them so long?

Well.. my problem with gentoo

[mindstrm]

What if I don't have a cdrom? How do I install gentoo?

Sony vaio laptop, no cdrom, USB floppy drive.

If it had boot floppies, I could rig something up.. but it seems to assume you have a cdrom that you can boot from.

Re:Well.. my problem with gentoo

[jvmatthe]

There was a recent discussion on the mailing list about using a very common boot floppy. The friend I have that recently installed Gentoo went this route because he too didn't have a CD-ROM drive. Check the mailing list archives for the past 30 days. I suspect it was in gentoo-user or gentoo-dev.

Re:Well.. my problem with gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

look on the forums, theres SEVERAL posts on making your own bootable boot disks.

Re:Well.. my problem with gentoo

[mindstrm]

See, right away, that's part of the problem.
I have to resort to a forum for something as common and obvious as how to make boot disks for it?

They talk about being a close-to-them-metal distribution.. yet their install procedure is very narrow minded.

Re:Well.. my problem with gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

Welll... complain to $DEITY for not having implanting all knowledge in YOUR narrowmind... Sheesh dude, how eay do you want it? Good, don't use it. Who needs more morons posting moron thoughts and moron questions... Good day to you...

Re:Well.. my problem with gentoo

[Anonymous Coward]

well hey lunar has instructions on the main page to install lunar with out a cdrom :-P
have a nice day

Re:Well.. my problem with gentoo

[RagManX]

OK, so how do you install Windows on that laptop without a CD-ROM? I don't think it is too much of a stretch for them to assume you have a CD-ROM, and they provide instructions for installing on a system without a bootable CD on the same page as the instructions for the standard install.

RagManX

Re:Well.. my problem with gentoo

[porlw]

I used Tom's Root Boot (http://www.toms.net/rb/). As long as you can get the networking set up you can pretty much follow the standard Gentoo installation.

Re:Well.. my problem with gentoo

[mejh]

Whenever I need a boot floppy, I use tomsrtbt. It helped me install Gentoo on my old p120 laptop, which doesn't have a bootable CDROM drive.

Cheers, Mark.

Re:Well.. my problem with gentoo

[mindstrm]

Who is comparing them to windows? I'm comparing them to every other linux distribution out there.
Most of them have other ways to install, via ftp, nfs, http, afs, etcetera.. with versatile boot disks.

As for windows, Microsoft has plenty of documents for how to install over a network.

Yeah I know it's off topic....

[Awestrykker]

I was just wandering what some off the folks here thought of COMTIAs Linux+ certification. I'm on of Gate's minions. but I want to broaden my horizons and stay competitive in the job market. It is amazing how many diffrent flavors of Linux there are Gee that Torvalds guy kicks ass Awestrykker

Intelligent discussion of the source distros

[Xoid629]

There is a sorce based distro war developing, but no one ever seems to say anything about the actual advantages, disadvantages, or differences of any kind. All the discussions I see on various forums are something like this:

Newbie: can someone tell me which is better gentoo or sorcerer [/source mage/lunar linux] ?
Gentoo Fan: Sorcerer sucks, use Gentoo.
Sorcerer Fan: Gentoo sucks, use Sorcerer.

So is there anyone who has used these distros who would be interested in telling us (rationaly :-))something about how they differ from each other and what their respective advantages might be? Any links to previous discussions or reviews?

As a side note, I would also be interested in knowing about any one using source based distros on dial up connections. I'm on 56k (for the moment; I might get ADSL soon), and while I don't mind doing reasonably long downloads at night with a DL accelerator/resumer, I do mind installs taking several days of phone time. I also can get friends with real connections and CD burners to help, but I'm not sure how useful that is in this situation...

Re:Intelligent discussion of the source distros

[Asha'manTU]

one quick comparison of the various source based distros can be found at http://www.distrowatch.com/source.php
which compares the various packages that each distro includes.

Now, personally I use Source Mage, so I am biased towards it. I have found though that often looking at the scripts on Gentoo that they seem many times larger than ours, and sometimes when looking at them, I often wonder what the person who wrote that script was thinking. Now granted, some of the more complicated packages do have more complicated scripts. But a lot of them only contain the very basic info of where to download from, version number, name, and a couple other fields, which come to about 10 - 15 lines total. Which I found easier to figure out my first time how to write the script. I think my first one took me only 30 minutes. After that it was much easier. An quick script now, can take about 3 - 5 minutes to create.

I just find the scripts behind the packages easier to follow in SM than in Gentoo. I also like the way that when you do an update in SM that it checks afterwards it checks to make sure all the packages still work. For example, if you do an update of libpng, which is a dependency of several apps, SM and Lunar as well will check to make sure that those apps still work, and if not will recompile them to use the updated library. Gentoo will only do that if it is a setting in the 'ebuild' file. for both SM and Lunar, it's built into the main scripting, and doesn't have to be part of the 'module' or 'spell' which are the equivalents to the ebuild.

Gentoo from my understanding is not as cutting edge as a whole as SM. For example, the main release of grub is version 0.90, but they have also managed to get the splashimage patch of grub to work. Ours is version 0.92, and the patches we could not get to work with that version, and yes we were using the patches designed for grub 0.92. So this can be seen as both good and bad. Good in the fact they have managed to get a feature to work we have not, bad in the fact they are a couple versions behind. So in that it's up to the end user which they prefer.

One big advantage to Gentoo, has to do with it's maturity. The fact that it has been around so much longer than the others.

A disadvantage I heard about from a guy who claimed to use Gentoo and was wondering about a reason to change to lunar was that gentoo doesn't have an installer, and that you have to do a lot of chrooting to do the initial install. SM, Lunar, and Sorcerer all have installers which are fairly easy to use.

I hope this helps. I tried to be rational about it, and I hope I got all my information on Gentoo correct.

Use whichever one you like. I prefer Source Mage, but that is me.

As for the development team on Lunar, congradulations.

Re:Intelligent discussion of the source distros

[Asha'manTU]

another difference,

SM, Lunar and Sorcerer all grab the source code packages off of the package developers site with the option to download off of mirrors of the developers site as well, rather than their own servers.

Re:Intelligent discussion of the source distros

[richie2000]

gentoo doesn't have an installer, and that you have to do a lot of chrooting to do the initial install.

Well, it's one chroot, I don't know if that's a lot. You chroot from the boot CD into the untarred base install on your harddrive and do the rest from there. If you have to abort the install (boot into Windoze for a little Counter-Strike or so) you basically boot off the CD again, chroot in and continue where you left off. You don't have that extra layer of fluff between yourself and the bare metal and I guess that can be intimidating, but as long as there aren't any really good UI utils for running stuff like ifconfig (Winipcfg) or fdisk (HDToolbox or PartitionMagic) I think of it as good teaching. You tell people that this is how to set the most common settings for your Ethernet card so if they ever have to change it again, they have some kind of idea what's involved.

It's no big deal to me. When I first looked at Gentoo and the install docs I almost ran for cover, but if you have the ability to read and write it's basically a no-brainer. I agree that it could be scripted to work completely automatically for maybe 90% of the users since you just follow the doc and type in what it says, but the remaining 10% (multibooting, exotic hardware and so on) wouuld be SOL.

Re:Intelligent discussion of the source distros

[Xoid629]

Thank you, that's exactly what I was after. :-)

fa!

[Anonymous Coward]

Can "Son of Spotted Purple Banana" Linux be far behind? Honestly, who cares?

who needs it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who needs yet another incompatible linux distro?
FreeBSD is way better and more and more people are switching to FreeBSD.

even with RH I can install only those apps I want

[maharg]

.. just select the individual apps !

Who needs facts, right?

[Anonymous Coward]

People taking a placebo notice an improvement, too. Without at least double-blind testing to see if it actually does "feel" faster, we don't even know if it really does feel faster.

My guess is that it does not, but I also bet the Gentoo people are in no hurry to do real testing.

PLACEBO

[Anonymous Coward]

See the post that the cowards modded down. Troll... NOT.

linux is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

Let take bets on when this unneeded distro will die. linux needs to die. It's so 1980s.

Re:Benchmarks? We dont need no stinkin benchmarks.

[Anonymous Coward]

It FEELS faster. What more proof can you possibly need?

No CD Burner

[nagora]

The big problem I have with the source distros is the need to start from a CD. Is it not possible to start from an old Linux install and download something that allows the bootstrapping of the new system from there?

TWW

Re:No CD Burner

[mejh]

To install LFS you must use an existing Linux install on the machine to create your LFS system, using the existing system's compiler and the 'chroot' command.

With Gentoo, I believe you can install it off an existing system as well, just by downloading the system tarball, untarring it on a new partition, and again using the 'chroot' command to then compile and install the system.

If you don't have an existing system, you can just use a Linux boot floppy such as tomsrtbt, boot with that, set up the network/internet connection, and then download/chroot from there, which is what I did on a laptop with no bootable CDROM drive.

Try it!
Mark.

Re:No CD Burner

[dROCKuser]

Alternatively you can use Rock Linux (another source-based "distro", maybe even the first one), where you can start from your current system, download the needed pkgs and compile your system with your favourite options and optimisations.

It Rockz! :)

Hey it was a joke

[Salsaman]

You know Lunar/Sun. But anyway, it's cool :-)

Sourcemage

[fozzmeister]

Use sourcemage instead. when sorceror finished lunar seemed nto to be too nice ppl, sourcemage however have debian like policies.

Why not slackware?

[un4getful_you]

i can say that these kind of distros are for those who want to play with their linux, to those who wont regret if their system crash, to those who love to update their system everytime without knowing what will happen after their updated the whole box. my slackware dont need to update regularly because i know i have a better and tested distro, i do upgrade when its needed.. cheers.

Page Layout

[Anonymous Coward]

Their page layout looks... familiar. Why is that?

<!-- HEADER START kuro5hin -->
<!-- BLOCK START kuro5hin -->

Ah... that's it!

Floppy Install

[nurb432]

Most major linux distros ( and all *BSD's ) support this...

I use it to install on laptops via pcmcia ethernet that don't have a cdrom drive... works wonders.

debian source vs lunar source?

[gnalle]

I don't know much about Linux, but according to the manual, Debian allows users to install using source.

Is source installation in Debian different from source installation with Sorcerer or Lunar?

Installing Linux without a CD

[tarmo]

You can also install Debian without a CD. Just get a suitable set of boot disks. If you get one with the correct NIC driver built into the kernel, you just need the rescue and root floppies and that big fat ethernet connection of yours. If you need driver modules, then you need an additional 4 disks of drivers, as well.

Or you can burn it all to a cd-rom. It's about a 12MB download. No fuss with slow floppies and you still get the newest version from the net.

Lunar Linux?

[smeschini]

Who needs another Linux distro? I'd choose within 3/4 distributions...