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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 The fork occurred in late January to early February of 2002 and was originally made up of a small group of people who wanted to collaboratively develop and extend the Sorcerer technology.'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."
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).
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
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.
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.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
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.
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??!?
The Free desktop that Just Works
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.
Who am I to blow against the wind? -- Paul Simon
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.
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.