Libranet 2.8 Released

Jon Danzig writes "Hi, Libranet 2.8 has been released and I hope you will inform your readers. Libranet is our implementation of Debian to which we have added our installer, up-to-date software e.g. KDE, Gnome, kernel, etc., and generally packaged GNU/Linux into a super smart fast and stable system. The installer has sophisticated hardware detection and setup with flexable installation of software packages. We keep hearing that the Linux Desktop is on the horizon and while the horizon never gets any closer Libranet is steadily making its way in that direction."

Comments

first post

[Akash]

why dont they have a downloadable version of it?
every other distro does

YAD -- Yet another distro...

[Jerk City Troll]

Yet another failure. There's so many "desktop distros" out there that completely miss the point. This appears to be, like in most cases, a simple packing of sources straight from KDE, GNOME, etc. That's not how you create a good desktop distribution.

Desktop environments such as GNOME and KDE are like reference implimentations. They demonstrate the technology they've created. They show one way it could be used to create a usable environment. I argue that they are not necessarily meant to fall directly into the hands of end users. The reason for this is that the coders are not user interface specialists, they're technologists. They have little talent for creating a system grandma can use. Case in point: look at the default GNOME 2 environment from the project and look at how RedHat reworked it. Out of the box, GNOME 2 is almost completely unusable in my opinion whereas on RedHat 9, it's excellent.

RedHat, in my opinion, have got it right. I recently tried installing RedHat 9 on my mom's new system and I will never look back at other distros for desktop purposes. They took technologies provided by KDE and GNOME and put them together in such a way that serious consideration was given to usability! They didn't just package up the source trees and say: "Here! Linux for the desktop!" They created a tightly integrated environment with simplified menus, a good theme, powerful but understandable tools for configuration, and all that. Once again: it's not just a blind repackaging.

If we want Linux to move to the desktop, there needs to be more effort towards making these environments really usable. They are currently designed by techies for techies and that just does not cut it. So in this respect, Libranet is not much better (save installation tools) than default Debian or any other distro that gives no thought to the big picture.

Re:YAD -- Yet another distro...

[Ed Avis]

I completely agree but it's strange how the desktop projects themselves seem to dislike this. Look at all the complaining about how Red Hat had 'broken' KDE in the 8.0 release by theming it and changing the default browser to Mozilla. Some of the KDE developers seem to think that _they_ should decide the user interface experience, and that a common look and feel between KDE on different platforms (Linux, BSD, Solaris etc) is more important than a common look and feel within a distribution.

(Yet within the desktop project itself, there is no problem with theming the contained applications so they look consistent. When, a few years back, rxvt was adapted to make the original kvt, nobody claimed that the developers had 'broken' rxvt, or spoiled the consistent rxvt user interface across platforms. Of course fixing the look and feel to be consistent with the rest of KDE was more important. But the same principle should be applied more widely - adapting KDE, GNOME, Mozilla , OpenOffice and others to fit in to a single distribution.)

I'd like to try it...

[jdreed1024]

...but unfortunately, it appears that you can't, at least not without paying. They're pretty crafty about it too, adding both a "Buy" and "Download" link, however the "Download" link merely takes you to a page where you can choose to purchase the downloadable version for anywhere from $39.95 (student) to $104.95 (Institution), or you can purchase the previous (2.7) version for ($24.95). If there's a place where you can try it for free, it's not linked from their site.

Now, this is not to say there's anything wrong with trying to make money from Linux. However, it's truly unfortunate that there's no way to check out this distro without shelling out some money. RedHat lets you download for free, as do all the other major distros. However, they'll also take your money if you want the box version or if you want support. Libranet can't seriously hope people will shell out money to switch to this without being given a risk-free chance to experience it.

And, since they basically took Debian, modified it, and made it not-free as in beer, I'm wondering why they just got free publicity on Slashdot.

Re:where are the screenshots of the installer?

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

How about a easy to install tested Debian w/ the same packages as other bleeding-edge distros? Also, the Adminmenu tools is great, allowing even a newbie to recompile teir kernel w/ ease which is something I haven't seen the likes of anywhere else.

Re:A problem with the KDE menu

[Angry White Guy]

It's not just you. I think that KDE really missed the boat on that one. They spent a lot of time designing UI guidelines, unified printing, and polishing the GUI gleaming that they missed the most basic part, sane 'Start Menu' layout.

Of course We could always go do it ourselves...

So what is the real difference?

[BillyJoJimBob]

So, what is the real diference between the Libranet "system" and everyone elses "package". They stress that they are different because their product is a system, but never really give solid examples of the way(s) their system is different than a package. There is almost too much variety available to make a decision on which system/package to use without going to the trouble of trying several of them. While that can be fun, sometimes you just need to get something installed and running without too much "buyers remorse" after the system is up and running. I have used various unixes (both BSD and AT&T style) and also linux (Redhat) in the past for a variety of situations, but trying to grok the advantages of the different systems/packages for linux can be frustrating.

Re:Well, have you tried Libranet?

[Jerk City Troll]

In my opinion, usability also is a measure of how hard it is to install a package, recompile a kernel, etc.

I am not talking about usability for people who need nothing more than vi, find, and grep to manipulate their system. My mother doesn't care about installing packages or recompiling kernels. She, like many other users, wants a system that behaves in an intuitive way, and just works the way it's expected to work. RedHat has pulled that off quite nicely. Not to mention that in an ideal system, you don't have to install packages yourself or recompile the kernel (especially the latter). With RedHat9, everything my mother's system needed was right on the three discs. The kernel didn't need recompiled because it was all modular. Nevertheless, these still are not usability issues my mother is concerned with. What is a usability issue is that the menus were cleanly arranged -- programs she would use where there. The user interface is consistent, beyond just look and feel but also organization, and so on. RedHat 9's environment felt a lot like MacOS X's environment insofar as its clean, elegant features.

I haven't even gotten into how much better apt-get is.

I am a Debian user and have been for years now. Debian is the only distro that I would ever use and ever recommend to other technically minded people. However, after wrestling with boring, default Debian packages for the desktop environment and other annoyances that just would not work (truetype in Mozilla for instance) I found RedHat was far better suited to the task of being a desktop distribution. Most everything I needed worked out of the box, many things I never got quite right in Debian. As for installing things like Flash, that's 3rd party software and it's an annoyance on any platform.

Libranet is nothing special outside vanilla Debian, so that makes it even more irrelevant in this case.

Should be better than knoppix

[mnmn]

Since we have to pay for it, they should really offer something worth $70 over other free distros. Firstly, if they can somehow offer the drivers with the package, nvidia, tokenring in default installs, they'd be QUITE different.

But I would personally pay for a distro that can completely strip down the binaries, even stripping off READMEs and man pages, and compiling it optimised for size. Knoppix is one awesome distro that can detect most hardware, and comes with so much command line utilities, but something that can beat that would be worth 70.