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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 The fork occurred in late January to early February of 2002 and was originally made up of a small group of people who wanted to collaboratively develop and extend the Sorcerer technology.'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."
This is desperately needed: YAFLD.
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:
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!
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.
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
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.
If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
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
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
"The plural of anecdote is not data." -- Roger Brinner
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....
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?
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..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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"
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.
Sitting Walrus Blog
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.
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.
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)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.