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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."
as in all other things, if you can afford to market a product to millions, you're likely to end up with a larger share of the pie. Whether it's worth it is up to you...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
It's not exactly apt-gettable goodness I'm afraid (which is too bad, apt-get is slick as hell).
For some reason, it contains two of every binary.
Why do we need so many distros when we already have 1 or 2 well developed, well supported good ones? Instead of making a thousand for different purposes, why not just make it easier to customize Red Hat or Suse to fit all those purposes(i.e. LinuxBBC, uclinux, etc)?
Ark Linux is not based on Debian, but is instead based on Red Hat. See the article - they admit that they've goofed.
APT is now avaliable for RedHat distros.. check out this page
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.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Alright, let's stop letting microsoft do all our visual design. Evidenced here. That looks remarkably like WinXP's Control Panel. I'm sorry, but the general trend in desktop distros, especially ones with KDE, is to make things look like windows. Can we please try to innovate a little more on the user interface? I use Enlightenment, I think it does a fairly good job of this. I mean, some of the top downloads for themes are based on Mac's OS X. We need a defined Linux-look and feel that's not based on something developed by someone else. The Linux desktop should not try to be a clone of the Windows. see here.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
I'm personally hoping Novell changes the distribution methods for SuSE.
I don't want to attract flames en masse, but I am about to. Flame accordingly.
A large part of leadership is doing what's best for the project, and that includes a) giving up control when required, and b) reorganizing where required in order to best utilize resources. This discussion of Ark Linux (which I've heard of but is basically a small player) has helped me to realize that we're being held back by our disunity as a community and our insistence on doing everything by ourselves individually instead of focusing on more communal efforts in which resources are shared for the common good.
I think that the Linux distro leaders (not just Ark, I don't mean to single them out) should begin looking into the possibility of friendly mergers, a la the "mostly failed United Linux". There's a massive duplication of effort in the Open-Source and Free Software communities, and it is literally draining the already limited resources of the community. We have easily 100 different distros, 90% of them are clones of other distros or are so similar as to make themselves irrelevent, and they are all hard at work adding the new Gnome, the new KDE, the new *whatever* into their newest version instead of actually doing something innovative with their time. Linux still has useability issues that existed at the beginning, but everybody's too engrossed in dividing the miniscule Linux market share a hundred ways rather than working together to create a single magnificent system that would dwarf the proprietary competition and create massive acceptance and use of open software and operating systems.
I understand that the guys who have their own distros love their distros and think that they are the best distros out there, but really, is that as important or worthwhile as working together on creating something totally new, rather than just duplicating other people's distributions and putting your own name on it? There are some great hackers out there putting out distros, but they'll never make a name for themselves compiling a distro that less than 20 people will use regularly. They should focus on doing something new, filling a niche that hasn't been filled yet.
As Tina Turner sang, "We don't need another distro". But there are lots of things we DO need, and reaching out to others to propose joining forces would free valuable and talented people up to to valuable and talented things. I'm not questioning the motives of the distro leaders, and I don't mean to offend anybody or come off as bossy and demanding. I'm just saying that if we want Linux to succeed, we have to work together and make sacrifices. We should strive for unity and cooperation where possible, because we are currently NOT using our resources effectively.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
We'll tell you when your compile finishes.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
It isn't a question of "we need", and it never has been. People create new Linux distributions for the same reason a lot of open-source software gets created -- because they want to. This is an obvious result of freedom: people can do what they want to, regardless of whether it is what anyone says "we" need.
In a free society, the motivation for individuals doing things is not that some authority thinks that society needs the outcome. Rather, it is that individuals choose to do things, for whatever obvious or inscrutable reasons they may have, using their own time, resources, and skills.
What you could ask, instead, is: "What motivates people to create more Linux distributions, or other free software that's similar to existing software?" Human action is often inscrutable indeed -- we often cannot even correctly state in retrospect the precise reasons we ourselves make choices. However, I suspect that several factors may enter into the decision to make new software to accomplish the same goals as existing software:
Put another way, it is usually only from a particular (often, biased) perspective that two pieces of software meet all of the same needs and desires. It would be a short-sighted person indeed who complained that GNU Mailman is duplicative of the efforts that went into the writing of Majordomo. After all, people's interest in pieces of software (and in writing and assembling software) is so often individual -- not aggregate or social -- and nobody but the person doing it can really know why.
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.