Recent Apt-Gettable Goodness From Ark, Conectiva

JimLynch writes "When you think of Linux, certain names spring to mind: Red Hat, SuSE--even Libranet. But you almost never hear someone say "Hey, did you download the latest version of Ark Linux?" Well, it's too bad, because Ark Linux might someday be a viable contender for the Linux desktop crown and it surely deserves some recognition as such at this point. Despite being labeled an alpha, Ark Linux is one amazing little distro." In other distro news, lmvaz writes "Conectiva, the biggest Linux distribution of Brazil and South America released yesterday the 'Conectiva Linux 10 - Technology Preview 2,' bringing the kernel 2.6.1, KDE 3.2 rc1, Gnome 2.4, Mozilla 1.5, OpenOffice 1.1, etc. The release notes are available here and the torrents for download are here. The final release is expected by the end of the first semester of this year. It's a nice bundle for people wanting to help getting the 2.6 linux kernel in shape."

Comments

Not Debian based, Red Hat based

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not exactly apt-gettable goodness I'm afraid (which is too bad, apt-get is slick as hell).

Not true

[boobsea]

APT is now avaliable for RedHat distros.. check out this page

Re:Not true

[Anonymous Coward]

Fair enough, but the comment in the article was because they thought it was Debian-based, when in fact it is RedHat based. That was what I was talking about.

I mean I guess we could say that FreeBSD isn't Linux based, but then someone would point out that you can run Linux binaries on FreeBSD. Doesn't change it. :)

Re:Not true

[optikSmoke]

How many times do I have to respond "The people putting the packages together matter more than the final interface used to install the packages."?

Indeed, I agree -- using apt on *RedHat* is a chore because of this (believe me, I used to use that combination). However, you should not lump all RPM-based distros into this category. Mandrake (with urpmi) works beautifully, and the main reason is they have employed an intelligent package-naming and dependency scheme (like Debian's, I believe) and have a tool (urpmi) specifically built for it.

I personally find it annoying when people break out the "RPM's are terrible" arguments -- like you say, the way the packages are put together matters much more. With Mandrake, you get well-thought out package names, and a huge range of packages (even more if you setup PLF and contrib sources). Frankly, I don't see apt as a motivator for me to switch my distro to Debian; Mandrake already has an equally good (if not better) solution.

Answer

[Space cowboy]

I'd suggest it's a combination of 'not-invented-here' syndrome, along with a gross under-estimation of the amount of work required. There are exceptions, but I'd guess most fall into this...

Waay back in the mists of time, when slackware was on single-figure floppies, I wrote and distributed the 'MDK', a unix-like distribution for the Atari-ST using MiNT as the unix-like kernel. It's bloody difficult, even with the relatively-tiny number of packages that I used, to keep everything in sync. It didn't help that compiling gcc took 8 hours, either :-)

Simon.

Incorrect

[boobsea]

Ark is not debian based, as you state, but apt is avaliable for RPM based distributions:

http://ayo.freshrpms.net

Ignorant to definition of "Debian"

[Anonymous Coward]

i'm not the same guy you replied too. but you're a fool if you think installing APT makes your system Debian. there's a lot more to a Debian box than just APT. the original poster was complaining that Ark is not Debian based, which is completely correct. The fact that you can slap APT on this RH-based distro is irrelevant.

Connectiva mirrors

[DerOle]

Go here for FTP and HTTP mirrors of the site.

apt-gettable was a casualism

[timothy]

apt4rpm (if I recall correctly) was developed by Conectiva employees, and Conectiva has used apt for several years, possibly since their first public release. They're not based on Debian, correct -- they're more like Mandrake, a Red Hat based distro that has diverged as it's matured.

timothy

Re:Question

[Bero]

The reasons we started Ark Linux are simple -- even the best customization tools for existing distros won't make it possible for newbies to use them.

How would a newbie benefit the easiest-to-use tools being available for a traditional distribution if he can't get beyond the partitioning step of the distribution installer, which must please experts?

It is just not possible to create a distribution that makes a good newbie home desktop, a good corporate workstation and a good server all in one.

Furthermore, most traditional distributions refuse to diverge from the established standards -- which is, sometimes, necessary, if you want to do something new (like, for example, being easy to handle even for a total n00b).

The goal of Ark Linux is to make Linux dead simple to use while still keeping the system a powerful platform for people who know what they're doing.

Re:wtf?

[Bero]

This is a feature, not a bug. ;)

We want a dead simple installation, without scaring people off by throwing words they don't understand at them.

That said, since many people are requesting it, we will be adding an alternative installer for techies in the future -- but don't expect this to happen for some more months, we'd like to get our newbie-friendly stuff done first. ;)

Volunteers to speed it up are welcome of course!

Re:Ark Linux?

[Bero]

No, definitely not.
That's a severe misrepresentation of what happened.

I left Red Hat to start a totally different kind of distribution because I disagreed (and still disagree) with the way Red Hat was heading -- removing KDE credits was just a very small part of that, the much bigger part was removing most KDE applications, and stripping KDE of its identity (such as forcing the ergonomic nightmare known as double-click on users -- I still have to see ans computer newbie who doesn't have problems learning how to double-click).

Ark Linux is very different from Red Hat both in the technology used and the purpose.