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Distros To Try: Slackware 9.0-rc1 And Yoper 1.0
FrosGate writes "Slackware 9.0-rc1 is now available for public consumption over at www.slackware.com. From the site: 'Some of the main components included are the 2.4.20 Linux kernel, KDE 3.1, GNOME 2.2, and XFree86 4.3.0, as well as gcc-3.2.2 and the latest development libraries. Enjoy!' Enjoy is right!" And Scorchen writes "YOPER has released Version 1.0 of their increasingly popular distro. This is the their first stable release." Here's the announcment. The website claims "With Yoper it is possible to import packages from all the other major distros including rpm's, deb's, and tgz packages."
I've been looking at YOPER recently, and it really doesn't seem to be much more than just another distro. The website makes all sorts of amazing claims, but when it boils down to it, it just doesn't seem to have a lot to it. Slackware + alien?
:)
I dunno - somebody prove me wrong!
Prisoner #655321
Latest GCC, latest stable kernel, latest GNOME, latest KDE, latest Xfree86, and yet solid as a rock :)
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Yoper has already been discussed thoroughly in an OSNews feedback thread and it has been decided that a lot of their claims are duds or dont quite work and they dont add anything visually pleasing to the distro. Everything Yoper looks like crap. Dont believe me, check out their screenshots. That Y instead of the K looks terrible.
--------- I have no signature
We've got all these different distributions of Linux, but nothing seems to separate one from another. This one's got standardized app installing. This one's got a nice OS install script. This one's got a better app installation system. This one can use all the different installation systems.
Whatever. There simply isn't any value added by any of these distributions.
Which one stands head and shoulders above the rest? Any suggestions?
I have been pwned because my
Ya know, ftp.slackware.com had JUST quieted down enough for the -current mirrors to rsync to a reasonably-recent version. At least I grabbed everything up to when Patrick threw in the Sendmail fix....
I am too tempted to agree.
:). Also, one cannot get to choose the packages to install in Yoper.
Having tried both Slackware and Yoper for sometime, I think here are some things to note that might try to differentiate the two distros:
a. Installation process- let me say that typing something like "yoper" to start the installation process of an OS is...um...different. But then, there is no rule/law which says that one *must* use the term "setup"..
b. Default Desktop: Slackware offers a choice. Yoper doesn't. I personally prefer XFCE (just a matter of choice, nothing personal against KDE), something that Yoper does not provide by itself.
c. Under the hood, there is no noticable difference between the two distros. They both have similar package menagement
yay! me too!!!
But its not for everyone. I guess this is a generation thing (lol). Most people from the pre-redhat/windows days continue to admire the simplicity and elegance of slackware. I just dont see a new linux adopter choosing the "plain and dry" slackware over anything else. Maybe in 10 years, people wont even open consoles anymore. But I for one cant live without a shell prompt the rest of my life....
Just count the number of *dumb* "slackware is dead" posts!
Don't Panic
That would alleviate a big hurdle for bandwidth-challenged folks.
Hopefully, this is something drobbins and crew have on their radar screens.
Um, there was no Slackware 5. Patrick jumped from 4 to 7.
BTW, Patrick, you and your distro both kick ass. Keep the faith!
What is with this problem people have with RedHat? The configuration management choices they made may seem unique, but after having managed quite a few systems with it, I really wish they would push harder for wider adoption of those idioms.
/etc/rc.d system. It ties in with pcmcia, networking and wlan-ng quite nicely. I almost wish their SysV style scripts and tools (chkconfig, svc, /etc/init.d/functions, ifcfg-[dev], etc.) were used by more distros. I guess I've been tainted by working with Solaris, but I enjoy that method. It makes adding and removing services easy and clean (no editing files for most stuff). And when I miss slackware (I used to run it) I can always add stuff to the /etc/rc.local and friends if necessary.
I'll admit it, I like RedHat's
I used to hate RPM, but I've come to appreciate it since most everything comes packaged as such, and the tool is rather powerful once you figure out how the hell to use it. Plus, those loonies at PLD give us i686 optimized software in RPM form of all the latest stuff that RedHat hasn't battle tested. This I cannot ignore!
I agree RPM tends to break on the kernel, but then I always install the latest kernel right after an install so I don't think about it. And a new stable kernel version later, a make oldconfig isn't too hard... I've never installed a kernel any other way, what's hard about doing it "manually"?
Don't know much about Debian, except that it has definitely moved on to 2.4 and Xfree 4.x
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
And of course, don't forget to checkout Dropline GNOME for Slackware. It's a GNOME-based desktop, similar to Ximian GNOME--instead of the plain GNOME packages shipped with slackware, you get an interface that has been tweaked to near-perfection and tons of extras (such as PAM support, allowing normal users to perform "root" tasks such as setting the time and date, and FAM, making Nautilus show up-to-date view of your file system) to make your desktop truely usable. You can learn more at www.dropline.net/gnome.
(And yes, I'm the main Dropline developer, so this is a bit of a plug and should be interpreted as such...)
Ok, so.
Yoper is a binary 686 arch distro, with rpm packages.
Slackware is a small binary 386 arch distro, with tgz packages.
Gentoo is a source distro for any architecture.
Gentoo is pretty fast, but damn you have to compile everything. It is fun to see which optimizations you can throw at the kernel, Xfree, kde and all. But I want an optimized build for AMD processors.
Maybe if someone had some spare time, do some benchmarks with P3/P4/XP compiled builds with SSE/MMX/3dnow/etc optimizations, could prove if specific builds are worth the hassle.
Before peoiple start asking, there is NO official iso for rc1 yet. However, plenty of people make them, and if you're interested, you can visit #slackware on irc.freenode.net, or some other slackware channel. I'll be happy to provide you with the iso i make on a regular basis.
/a/glibc* first /a/sed*, /a/elflibs*, /a/pkgtools*
In addition, slackware.com has very limited bandwith. Be gentle with it, use one of the mirrors. It's hard for those mirrors to sync the updates regularly as it is.
For those who wonder, if upgrading from 8.1 to 9.0rc1 is possible - yes, it is. I don't think there's an official document that specifically talks about 8.x to 9.0 upgrade. If you're interested, please be careful, and backup of course. [i just upgraded live 8.1 to 9.0rc1 two days ago, and here are few things to keep in mind:
- upgradepkg [--install-new sometimes] is your friend
- upgradepkg
- next couple packages to upgrade are
- keep couple terminals open, with some tools in memory, say midnight commander. they may save your life if needed
- for people with nvidia cards, if you upgrade xfree to 4.3, you probably should also recompile the nvidia drivers, and install nvidia glx stuff. for that, you'll have to have kernel compiled with your fresh new compiler [gcc3.2.2].
To sum it up, if you're interested, visit #slackware on irc.freenode.net, and somebody may answer your questions. Slackware 9.0rc1 works well, and as slackware goes - it is very stable, simple and elegant.
--- d'oh
I must disagree about Gentoo not being for Newbies. I think that Gentoo is the ultimate distro for Newbies. The instructions are direct and concise, with real world examples. Their forums are professionally moderated and updated frequently with users of varying degrees of experience. The difficult part is making sure that your kernel is configured just right, but a person with commodity hardware could install Gentoo on his/her system and be up and running within one day of compiling.
Red Hat' documentation is erratic at best and not easily navigable. SuSe was useful as soon as I figured out the correct path to download the distro from FTP. Mandrake didn't cut it for me. Believe me, I shopped around. I PURCHASED Red Hat at every new milestone release up to 7.2. I was really liking the way Gnome was looking on 7.2 Red Hat, and then they went and screwed up everything with 8.0. That was the most difficult distro for me, not becuase of the difficulty in understanding linux (although I am an intermediate user at best), but because it was so difficult to get *under the hood* to change anything. I used 8.0 for about two days and started hunting for a new Linux distro. I even went to Yellow Dog to be loyal to Red Hat, but found it to be wanting.
Gentoo was by far the easiest to configure, straightforward to understand and helpful in documentation. The first attempt was a disaster, the second attempt booted right up. The third attempt, on my 700 mhz Ibook was a total sucess with very minor cosmetic glitches. I can't praise Gentoo enough for making a Linux OS for the masses. Don't let anyone fool you: Gentoo is easy and configurable up the wazoo. I've never been more pleased with a linux distro. I'm only dissapointed that I didn't discover Gentoo until a few months ago. I would even be willing to sell gentoo on a prebuilt system-THAT's how much I like it. I've never sold linux on a prebuilt system because I make custom systems. I'd always burn some CD's to let others TRY it, but I"d install gentoo on any system that wanted it, it is so simple to use. I think that a CD with a stage 4 tarball and Unreal on it would sell to more people that would want it. I was even considering writing Gentoo to see if they would be willing to do tarball specifically for Nvidia's Cinema Platform with MythTV or something of the sort. Anyway, this is too long of a ramble. The short, no Gentoo is not for everyone, but its sheer simplicity is mindboggling.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
Slackware 8.1 is currently my linux distro of choice. I've used redhat, debian, gentoo, and mandrake (for about 20 min) in the past. But I settled on Slackware because, like FreeBSD, its easier to figure out what is going on behind the system, and why. The /etc/rc.d directory is very easy to follow and understand.
My ONLY complaint with slackware is installing new software, and updating existing software. I don't mind the source approach, but I wish it implemented FreeBSD's ports, or emerge from Gentoo, or something similar. Basically, some option to update or install something with minimal effort. I would have stuck with gentoo if it didn't change /etc so radically. Learning Gentoo is like learning a whole new flavor of unix, rather than "another linux distro".
Does anyone know if slackware plans on coming up with its own package or source based install/update solution akin to FBSD's ports, pkg_add, or gentoo's emerge, or debian's apt-get? Something that settles dependencies.
-Robertis that they have different dependency chains. Before I saw the glory of Debian Linux (I use non-free packages, so it isn't GNU/Linux) I tried using Redhat RPMs with Mandrake 7.something.
Each app wanted a different version of glibc or a different version of libfoo, and it eventually got to the point where I gave up.
I use debian for prepackages software and compile from source when no packages are available. Debian packages are of the highest quality, every one of them contains man documentation and stuff as well as a fully-integrated distro menu for those "other" window managers like windowmaker and blackbox.
If they made it work, then congrats to them. I just won't be betting on it any time soon.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Excuse the language, but I want people to notice this. On the "About" page, this is just two things I noticed on their "features" list:
Mozilla from Netscape Ltd.
OpenOffice from SUN.
I have sent them an email demanding that they change these -- Netscape is based on Mozilla and SUN has something called StarOffice, based on OpenOffice. My reason given for the demand was that slashdotters would obviously notice this and make the same demand, flooding their email.
So, come on, Slashdotters, start the email! At the very least we want:
Mozilla from Mozilla.org
OpenOffice from OpenOffice.org
or
Netscape from Netscape Ltd.
StarOffice from SUN.
Of course, considering the level of intelligence here, this appears to be a bunch of clever hackers without the cleverness.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
I agree. People label gentoo as newbie-unfriendly because you don't just pop in a CD and stare at pretty pictures for 30 minutes, then reboot straight into X and start browsing the web. A lot of people seem to think that a newbie-friendly linux should be a MS Windows desktop replacement.
Gentoo definitely gives the power user as much control as they need, but it's not as if a newbie has to utilize all of this from the getgo.
Someone who is truly interested in learning a unix-like os but not exactly ready to start configuring and compiling sources is given a break with gentoo.
For anyone not familiar with any kind of ports tree... They've developed a software tree based on (i think it's based on it at least) the BSD ports system. They have a set of autobuild scripts that will download, configure, compile, and install the software for you, automatically, just by using the emerge tool. Ex:
#emerge vi
When it finishes you'll be able to run vi.
Anyhow, even if you are a newbie, give Gentoo a shot.
read more about it here:
http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/about.xml
This is my sig. The post is over.
(Sorry, I'm about to flame a Linux distro... Posting anonymously to dodge Karma burns ;) )
. ..
Ok everyone seems to agree that Yoper doesn't really have anything special. It's just slackware + alien... Also I guess I'm not the only one here finding the catchphrase "Your Operating System!" just super cheesy... Also, what's with their product page? A huge PNG image? Doesn't even look good...
I have no problem with people trying to make money selling Linux. But do they have to insist so much on the Yoper(TM) all over the place. The domain is of course a dot-com, the first link on their navigation menu is "Store"... Sorry but half of my BS alarm have already been tripped...
But I get specially annoyed when due credit isn't given. Where is the page that says that their YDesktop is just KDE with the nice "K" replaced by an ugly "Y"? But I'm sure you will easily find the page where you can order "YDesktop Pack 1.0 for only $98"... I mean, their pages hardly mention it's a linux distro. Let's play a game: try to count how many times the word "Linux" appears on their site...
We could go on about how their site should be nominated for www.webpagesthatsuck.com (check the "About" link at the top... that actually takes you to the FAQ... Hello? HTML formatting anyone?), how their "user community" seems to have a count of 3 (oh but wait, these 3 are actully just flaming the distro on its own boards...)...
Ok, so if we agree Yoper kinda sucks...
so the question is, how in h*ll did they make it to #1 on Distrowatch?
*cough*cheaters*cough*faking*chough*hits*cough*
It will be a tiny version of Debian called 'DE' and to please RMS I'll call it GNU/DE.