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Conectiva Linux 9 Review
JigSaw writes "Here's an english review of a popular Linux distro in the Latin American countries: Conectiva Linux 9. Jason Prince investigates its installation, the desktop usage, the package manager (synaptic) and some of the problems he met on the way."
No matter how good Linux is and how bad Windows is, people first have to know what Linux is. Once Desktop adoption in any country is over 10% or so, then it is a very slippery slope for MS. That is one reason why they are fighting so hard to keep >99% or so of the i386 desktop.
Conectiva Linux 9 is already rather old...
The 10th release is arriving soon.
They were the first with apt-get for rpms. Pretty cool distro.
Was really nice see this review of Conectiva 9 even now near release of next one. For everyone interested in help with next release development, go to https://moin.conectiva.com.br/TechnologyPreview ( English link ) and see download directions to latest test release.
I installed apt-get and Synaptic on my laptop running Fedora 1. I absolutely love them, everytime I fire up my machine and the RHN applet tells me I need to upgrade, I use Synaptic to do it. Easy, painless, and fast.
How can I trust it when he is overlooking something so obvious as the 'Find' option in Synaptic?
I quote: it won't let you search the apt catalogues using natural language queries. For example, searching for 'word processor' returns no results; a more experienced user would know that they had to search for 'OpenOffice' or 'Abiword' to display the packages they were seeking. It would be great if Synaptic could search the package descriptions, as well as the title.
Now, in my Synaptic install (Debian unstable) I see the following: in the right top corner is a search box that does an incremental search on package name only. In the Package menu I find an option named Find (shortcut Ctrl-F, as a Windows/IE user would expect it) which allows me to search on all fields of the package. By default the search dialog that comes up searches on both package name and description.
Otherwise I would say, Synaptic rocks! It is the nicest package manager I have ever used. I still do apt-get install for individual packages, but for finding packages and just browsing the tree, I use Synaptic. The daunting aspect the reviewer notes is due to the sheer amount of packages available, some 5500 on Conectiva, and some 14000 on Debian.
Just try it. Get synaptic (and if you're on an rpmbased system, apt4rpm) and give it a whirl. You won't go back.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Sun's "Java Desktop System" is a GNOME only Linux distro. Then there's some fringe ones, like Gnoppix and Progeny IIRC.
I don't think any distro of importance is GNOME or KDE only at this point, which is good. Hopefully after a few more years of Freedesktop.org cooperation the whole point will be moot and most will be using the best KDE (K3B, Kdevelop etc.) and GNOME (Evolution, Gimp etc.), software on a hardware compositioned X all jimmied together in some kind of nutty bouillabaisse with Mono thrown in for the hell of it.
I'm guessing Novell/SuSE will be one of the first, since they're now such a strange combination of KDE (SuSE) and GNOME (Ximian) people and neither faction is likely to back down.
apperently not
Conectiva is quite well known in Brazil. I think this is because of the language barrier. While Spanish and Portuguese are similar enough that reasonably intelligent speakers of the two can communicate with each other, there are significant differences.
However, the size of Brazil's population and its economy make it the most economically important nation in Latin America. It is a nation of 190 million people with a large and rapidly growing economy. Many economists believe that the nations that will dominate the 21st Century economically are the so-called "BRICs:" Brazil, Russia, India, and China. I mention this because I'm sure Mexicans will get upset seeing me say that Brazil is the most economically important nation in Latin America. Anyway, even if Conectiva were to only have its distro widely installed here in Brazil (and I'm not sure if that's the case), it could still be the most popular distro in Latin America. Consider that even though all the nations of Latin America except Brazil speak Spanish, a majority of people in South America speak Portuguese (the population of Brazil is larger than that of the rest of South America combined). I believe that Portuguese is narrowly not the language of the majority of Latin Americans because México has a large population.
Anyway, I am in the process of founding a company for industrial production of food (I prefer not to be more specific right now), and I intend to use Linux on our computers-- not just the servers, but the desktops too. Because of its native support for Portuguese (developed by native speakers too... heh) and because of the presence of Conectiva right here in São Paulo, I am almost certain to use the Conectiva distro. Yes, people like my office manager, who know only Windoze, will have to learn to deal with a new GUI, but she's smart enough, and I am planning for training of all workers who will use computers. The cost of that training comes out cheaper than paying MS licenses.
I am trying to build a "Values-Led" business, and I like that we will be supporting another Brazilian company and keeping the profits from our software expenditures here in our community instead of sending them to Redmond. It's also nice that the technical support will be from people here in our city (M$ phone support in Portuguese is reached by dialing a toll-free number here in Brazil, but the people who answer are Brazilians working in Redmond... strange but true). I love that we will not be treated like criminals by our software suppliers and will never have to undergo a license audit. I also love that my employees will be able to take Conectiva CDs home or download the images at home and be able to install exactly the same software at home as they use at work. Even if we upgrade the machines at work, the employees who use computers at home will be able to keep pace. Contrast this with the Windoze situation, where people use Windows 2000 or XP at work, but typically use Windows 95 or 98 at home.
It's also cool that some well-known kernel hackers have worked at Conectiva, including Marcelo Tosatti (he left and is now working elsewhere, but he was at Conectiva when he was asked to maintain the then-production kernel) and Rik van Riel.
--Mark
"It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too." --Eugene Wigner