Review of Yoper Linux v2.1

Anonymous Coward writes "An interesting review of Yoper Linux has just been posted posted at linuxforums.org. Yoper Linux really does look like it could be the first serious competition Gentoo has had in a long time."

Comments

Competion for what?

[I_Love_Pocky!]

The first serious competion for what? The coolest new distro? That statement seems to imply that Gentoo is clearly the best around right now. I really like Gentoo, but I don't think I could dismiss all the other distros that easily.

Re:Competion for what?

[I_Love_Pocky!]

You're clearly stupid then.

Well I admit that freely, but how does that answer my question?

Re:Competion for what?

[LnxAddct]

Well why don't you find out what all the fuss is about and hop on the torrent.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Competion for what?

[St. Arbirix]

I think they were referring to Gentoo's "title" of being the fastest running distribution. Gentoo is a pure and simple pain in the ass to install and requires you to become very well versed in the ways and workings of linux. If Yoper can compare in running speed to Gentoo and also include a quick and easy setup then it would indeed be competition, but I'm sure neither of us are too fuzzy of the rules of this "competition."

If Yoper can run as fast as Gentoo, with a fraction of the setup time, and be just as stable, Yoper will be indeed be the Windows-replacer I suggest for our future Installfests on campus. We've been installing Mandrake or Fedora Core 2 and were toying with the idea of getting a few dozen lab computers setup with distcc to make Gentoo installs feasible. Yoper would definitely save us the effort.

I'll still want to see benchmarks for game performance though. This could be my Doom 3 Linux distro of choice as well.

On a different track of thought, perhaps someone in the Gentoo camp will work on making some of Yoper's features available in one of the install stages. It's won't be blatant rip-off, it'll be the bazaar in action.

Re:Competion for what?

[mc_barron]

The only difference from the default gentoo install, aside from being prebuilt, is the inclusion of prelinking. This is also available in gentoo but not installed by default.

Re:Competion for what?

[Derek Pomery]

Speed has never been what attracted me to gentoo.
Configurability, the easy generation of ebuilds (often just copying the ebuild text file to a new version name suffices), not to mention simplicity of tweaking a tar.gz myself or adding a patch file - everything I got out of building myself, but with package management system to keep track of what gets installed.

Then of course there's getting me out of binary dependancy hell for which I'm quite grateful, and there's always revdep-rebuild if some interaction gets lost (due usually to my having done a restricted update, but...).

As for the features, I agree.
Adding the patches to Gentoo will be trivial.
And Gentoo has had things like prelinking for ages - not to mention parallel startup and fancy gcc options.

But I've never seen the linux distro game as that competitive, looks like this one will serve a different market, offering a fully integrated, if less flexible, distro tweaked for speed.
Each distro has its uses. I use Knoppix and Fedora at times, even if every machine at home runs Gentoo.

Re:Competion for what?

[riprjak]

Im sorry if I disagree.

Gentoo does not IMHO require you to be well versed in the ways and workings of linux; if you can read one of the many languages in which the handbook is written, then I would say you merely require to have sufficient computer literacy to understand the consequences of your actions and the ability to type.

Gentoo makes you work hard to install, as it doesnt abstract you from what you are doing with excessive automation and pretty gui widgets, but it gives clear instructions and reasoning to every step. I find most linux newbies (who are already computer literate, not mousewagglers, but not power users) actually do better for going through a gentoo install and have a fairly good understanding of what they have done at the end.

Course, Im a gentoo supporter, so Im bound to like it.

Gentoo isn't aunt tillies OS by any stretch, but for someone who wants to know what they have done and learn about what they are doing, it is bloody hard to beat.

err!
jak.

Re:Competion for what?

[hitchhacker]

I don't see gentoo as being "just another distro".
Sure you can make it into a distribution, but portage is more like a collection of recipes for making distributions.
It could be universal to all distributions.. gnu/linux, bsd, hurd, or whatever.

I suppose the init scripts might make it a distribution.

-metric

Re:Competion for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yessir.

You can also define a list of applications (for gentoo: list of programs/versions/ebuilds) you want to install on computers of the installfest people, hook up some PCs from your lab and have them compile/prepare three/four "kinds" of installations [486, 586, i686, athlon, whatever].

Then, tar everything [read the gentoo's stage4 backup howto in the forums] and whenever a guy wants gentoo all you have to do is boot with a floppy or a knoppix, create partitions boot/root/swap/whatever you need, and untar the stage4 [you can burn the stage4 to DVDs or put it on a LAN FTP drive, or whichever method you choose.

This way, you have a complete gentoo system stage4 [system, applications, settings, blah blah] compiled for many architectures [provided you've edited the make.conf on the test machines on which you've compiled said systems].

It will be NOT hard to have said gentoo systems up and running on the installfest people's PC ;)

and, yes, it will be very cool to have it.

And you can also use the former lan-pcs with distcc in order to have users do, after the installation:

emerge sync [to a local lan repository, maybe]
qpkg -I -nc | xargs emerge -u

this way everyone will have a good system, and updated ;)

nice, innit? ;)

Re:Competion for what?

[cozziewozzie]

Distcc on a few dozen of lab computers? Why not simply use the GRP disks and install already precompiled packages, with decent optimisation settings? You don't HAVE to compile on gentoo, you know?

Anyway, the user can always re-emerge world once he/she gets home if they feel so inclined -- my feeling is that very few people would.

Re:Competion for what?

[Joey Vegetables]

I think they were referring to Gentoo's "title" of being the fastest running distribution. Gentoo is a pure and simple pain in the ass to install and requires you to become very well versed in the ways and workings of linux.

But it is absolutely painless to maintain and administer, and makes it effortless to keep up with reasonably current versions of software.

It's true that the speed boost that comes from building from source is overrated, but there are real benefits from Gentoo besides this, some specific to Gentoo and others common to all source-based meta-distributions. For instance . . .

• Very few linking and dependency problems at runtime; software is always built against your versions of libraries, and if there is a problem, it will usually happen during the build, not at runtime.
• Excellent user support at forums.gentoo.org - I've yet to encounter ANY problem, even a self-inflicted one, that wasn't satisfactorily addressed there.
• It's really easy to compile and install software from source even if there isn't an ebuild for it.
• Gentoo's "slots" are the simplest and most elegant mechanism I've ever seen for letting two versions of normally incompatible software packages coexist.
• Almost infinite flexibility. You aren't forced to include a package because some barely-related RPM requires it - set USE flags appropriately and you can have as lean and mean, or as complete and feature-rich, a system as you prefer.
• Since Gentoo distributes not the software itself, but the scripts by which you download/configure/install software, some tricky licensing problems with "almost-free" software (e.g. Java) are circumvented.
• You can not only decide how things will be compiled, but see how things were compiled, which makes debugging and troubleshooting much more straightforward.

I couldn't be happier with Gentoo, and would never willingly switch to a non-source-based distro ever again, even for production work (although a production environment does need much stricter discipline regarding frequency and testing of updates).

Re:Competion for what?

[bigredradio]

I am glad you said what you did. It further proves a point I have been trying to make for a long time. Gentoo is for not-so-knowledgable users who want to FEEL like a l33t hacker because they followed some instructions to build a system.

Gentoo is basically the equivelent of a "build your own AM radio" kit from radio shack. Yeah you have a deeper understanding of how it works, but I personally I would rather go and buy a nice Stereo. Does the kit mean you now have a deep knowledge of amplitude modulation and can substitute a degree. No.

Building a Gentoo system gives someone a little bit of knowledge that they can throw around at the IRC cocktail party. IMHO the real l33t hackers are only concerned with consistancy in their environment, the ability to develop with little interuption, and ease of use. If they want a system faster they may decide to use Gentoo. Not because they like tweeking the system, but because it allows them to get more done.

I can forsee Yoper becoming a Distro for those users because it allows them to get more work done. The "kit makers" will continue with Gentoo and I say, more power to them! My issues with Gentoo have only to do with the zealot users who feels that everyone else who uses a different distro are just cattle or newbies. They don't see that they wear their ignorance on their sleeve.

Not as good

[shfted!]

Obviously this is not as good as Gentoo. If they were running Gentoo, they would have spent 14 hours messing with USE tags so the poor server could keep up with a slashdotting ;)

Re:Not as good

[mcovey]

I'm a proud Yoperator (yoper user hehe.) I like it plenty, and it is faster than mandrake and debian on my computer. I've never tried gentoo nor do I want to simply because compiling everything seems beyond useless, it's why we invented binary code. If a program runs faster than a human can perceive, does that program really run faster at all?

Re:Too many Distros

[de Selby]

What? No Slackware?! //and so on

Re:Too many Distros

[Laebshade]

Though I'd prefer seeing ALL distros unite (without SCO) and call it "Final Fantasy Linux".

Do you really want a Final Fantasy Linux 8?

Oooo! Talk about stuff no one cares about

[Ridgelift]

Yoper Linux really does look like it could be the first serious competition Gentoo has had in a long time.

In other obscure news about competition that no one cares about, Bob's Fatburger is launching a new ham & swiss sandwich that may prove to be stiff competition against Arby's in the war of the cold cut sandwich arena.

if their webserver is any indication.. then no..

[joeldg]

I am gonna say "no" ..

but then, the article is slashdotted..

Full Text

[nuclear305]

Introduction
Ok, this is my first review and the kickoff to Linuxforums.org's Editorial Content Section, so lets get started. Yoper Linux is built around the idea of light, compact and wicked fast distro that is available to the average Linux user. Its 100% GPL compliant and the full ISO is free to anyone with an Internet connection. Yoper's popularity has absolutely skyrocketed with the release of v2.1 and is currently sitting at #18 on the distrowatch.com Page Hit Ranking.

Yoper's claim to fame is the speed at which it runs, out of the box. Yoper is a distro that targets the desktop Linux user from a brand new convert to the legendary guru. The latests release (2.1) improves upon the the installer, making it more user friendly and now includes non-destructive partitioning.

Speed applies to every aspect of the system. The install was completed, start to finish, in under 15 minutes. Once the system booted, the kernel took little time to load. It may seem little slow as compared to a custom kernel (like one created in a Gentoo install), but thats to be expected with a universal build. Once KDE started to load I noticed the speed kick. It was loaded in less than 10 seconds - which is good compared to my lovingly tweaked Gentoo system. Applications opened almost instantly and the overall feel of the system is similar to that of a fine Italian sports car, suave and fast.

The Yoper team accomplished this with the use of several methods that have always been available to those with enough experience, but generally beyond the average user, They include, but are by no means limited too:

Several performance enhancing patches to the kernel
All packages compiled specifically for the i686 against the latest and greatest of the gcc
All the binaries were 'stripped' (ie. all the debug symbols and other nonessential data are removed.) in order to create an even faster base system.
Prelinking

A short description of prelinking:

Due to Yoper's success, the process has been getting a lot of talk recently, and I was intrigued by the mechanics of this intriguing little utility. The results are readily evident: incredible startup times, even for massive applications. Basically whenever you start a program it has to find all the libraries that it will draw upon and link them to the correct location in the program. Prelinking does this when you run the Prelink, so when you start the program, 1/2 of all the startup work is already completed. Now should you be a developer, you will need to re-run the prelink code (a simple command available on their website) more frequently. They recommend it after major upgrades (such as KDE 3.2 to 3.3).

Installation
After downloading the single ISO and burning it, I booted into a BASH prompt. This might sound intimidating to those newer to Linux, but wherever a user is required to type something in there are directions included. In this instance it indicated 'type Yoper to begin setup'. A little fiddling reviled that the prompt had a few basic commands such as mount and access to Vim. Ready to begin the install, I typed Yoper, pressed enter and was greeted by the installer. Overall the feel of the install was similar to that of Slackware and comfortable enough for any user: even a Linux 'newbie'. While some may frown on the lack of a GUI installer, the Yoper team wanted to keep this all on one CD, resulting in a GUIless install. After a few simple steps (the installer holds your hand through the entire process) you arrive at qtparted, a graphical partition tool. The best part of this is that it not only makes the hardest part of the install possible through a simple GUI, but allows for non-destructive partitioning.

After that I hopped through the selection of a few mount points, selected a file system from ext2, ext3, reiserfs, and reiser4 then the install started. No progress bar or indicter of any sort was present, but the installer notified you that it would take 5-15 minutes. The lack of a package selection menu was a little surpr

Re:Full Text

[Anonymous Coward]

Yoper's popularity has absolutely skyrocketed with the release of v2.1

In other words, it went from having 2 users to having 12 users. Most other distros gained only a few percent during the same time period, Yoper's install base jumped sixfold! Statistics are fun.

Re:Full Text

[lytenyn]

Several performance enhancing patches to the kernel
All packages compiled specifically for the i686 against the latest and greatest of the gcc
All the binaries were 'stripped' (ie. all the debug symbols and other nonessential data are removed.) in order to create an even faster base system.
Prelinking

So I wonder - I've done all that on my gentoo-box .. then why should yoper be noticeably faster?

.. Besides the fact that I love Gentoo for various other reasons (no need to upgrade the whole system once in a while but rather gradual updates/ fine-grained control/ linux experience) ..

Re:Full Text

[smurf975]

Installation
After downloading the single ISO and burning it, I booted into a BASH prompt. This might sound intimidating to those newer to Linux, but wherever a user is required to type something in there are directions included. In this instance it indicated 'type Yoper to begin setup'. A little fiddling reviled that the prompt had a few basic commands such as mount and access to Vim. Ready to begin the install, I typed Yoper, pressed enter and was greeted by the installer. Overall the feel of the install was similar to that of Slackware and comfortable enough for any user: even a Linux 'newbie'.

Is it to much to ask for a simple bootmenu?
So:

1. Install Yoper
2. Rescue(Bash)
3. Use LiveCD
4. Other

Please press 1-4 to choose your option followed by the enter key. Thank you.

9 seconds remaining.........

Re:Full Text

[That's Unpossible!]

It is faster out of the box. At least, that is the claim.

Re:Full Text

[Carnildo]

Yoper is faster because you don't need to compile it.

Re:Full Text

[downbad]

No, because it doesn't.

Re:Full Text

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't need to compile Gentoo either, if you start with a Stage 3 installation. In fact, I hear lots of people recommend the Stage 3 install for Gentoo, since you'll probably recompile everything later as you get updates, and get a chance to compile it custom for your machine then.

Interestingly, I have Gentoo emerging KDE 3.3.0 as I'm typing this (would've been sooner, but I've been without internet access).

Re:Full Text

[Dcnjoe60]

Interestingly, I have Gentoo emerging KDE 3.3.0 as I'm typing this (would've been sooner, but I've been without internet access).

That's the point, if you used Yoper, you would have had KDE 3.3.0 on August 25th!

Re:Full Text

[lisany]

Its 100% GPL compliant and the full ISO is free to anyone with an Internet connection.
That's the point, if you used Yoper, you would have had KDE 3.3.0 on August 25th!

Do I even need to point out the logic flaw here?

different purpose

[updog]

It looks like Yoper has been created primarily for maximum performance on x86 machines. Although Gentoo is indeed fast as well, the main differentiating factor with Gentoo is that you build most of your system from source, which has other benefits (disadvantages) than simply execution speed.

I would not jump to the conclusion that it's competition for Gentoo just because it's also fast.

Re:different purpose

[TeknoHog]

Although Gentoo is indeed fast as well, the main differentiating factor with Gentoo is that you build most of your system from source, which has other benefits (disadvantages) than simply execution speed.

This is very true, and I'd like to clarify the reasons. The main one IMHO is that a lot of software options are compile-time. For example I don't use Gnome or KDE, thus I don't want any of the relevant dependencies/bindings compiled into the software I use. Many desktop oriented distros choose nearly every possible binding like this, 'just in case' it is needed. Even when the relevant code is not really used, bigger code is always slower.

The fact that Yoper is compiled for i686 should not make much difference; there are tons of compiler options that go beyond simple i686 capabilities. In fact many compile-time optimizations are due to compiler-independent options as I mentioned above.

It seems Yoper is fast because of prelinking. Gentoo with prelinking should be even faster. But again Gentoo's main point is not that it's fast; it's the ability to control almost every detail of software installation, while avoiding the complications from manual ./configure; make; make install.

Re:different purpose

[sparcnut]

Although Gentoo is indeed fast as well, the main differentiating factor with Gentoo is that you build most of your system from source, which has other benefits (disadvantages) than simply execution speed.

One of the other reasons, portability to other architectures, is what made me start using Gentoo in the first place. Since it's compiled from source, it's not too bad to port to other architectures and maintain packages for all of them. Gentoo runs on x86, x86-64, sparc/sparc64, mips, ppc, and alpha too if I'm not mistaken.

I run Gentoo on sparc64 since it is the only distro that provides recent sparc packages except for Debian, which doesn't mix well with my taste. Redhat, Suse, Mandrake, and Splack (which is Slackware ported to sparc) used to support sparc but seem to have quit, so you can't get any recent packages for them.

Re:different purpose

[Ender Ryan]

Finally someone who gets it entirely and gets modded up for it. I am so damn sick and tired of people making all kinds of comments about Gentoo without understand what it's purpose even is.

I salute you, Mr. Gentoo Using Guy Who Actually Gets It.

Re:different purpose

[Minna Kirai]

making all kinds of comments about Gentoo without understand what it's purpose even is.

We know what the point of Gentoo was supposed to be. We're also aware of the numerous side-by-side benchmarks that've shown Gentoo machines to run slower than Fedora and Debian, on the same hardware.

Re:different purpose

[Enucite]

Let me first say I've got nothing against gentoo, it's a nice distro for desktops.

However, I just want to point out: most people running Gentoo use really stupid cflags. It's obvious looking at the Gentoo forums that a majority of the people running it and giving advice on cflags don't even know what the cflags do.

So if they just used stupid cflags in the benchmark it's probably fair. ;)

Re:different purpose

[TeknoHog]

Maybe the better phrase here is bloated code rather than bigger code? Not to flame an otherwise informative post, but the always part is probably a little strong.

Thanks for the correction. I was generalizing a bit too much. My excuse is having a VIA Nehemiah with a very small cache (64 KB L2), so these things matter more than usually.

Re:different purpose

[Moloch666]

I agree 100% about what a lot (maybe not typical) gentoo user does their cflags. I spend more time in the gentoo forums than I do here. As soon as somebody posts some wacky cflags, they are quickly pointed out. Those people have the same mentality when sticking Type-R stickers on their computer case thinking it will go faster.

But oh well... some one gave me a troll moderation. Not that I care if poeple think Gentoo is crap or not, I do like to do my part and correct any errors. I've also got a FreeBSD box *gasp*

Re:Too many Distros

[pnatural]

We don't need 100 distros. Damn, we don't even need 10.

Yes, we do need them.

The thing you're missing is (as Agent Smith would say) purpose. Many of these distros exist purely because they meet a specific purpose. For example, there are distros used for desktop computers, distros for firewalls, distros for embedded devices, distros for clustering, distros for servers, etc.

Put another way: choice is good!

Now, had you said "we don't need 100's of desktop distros" I might have agreed.

Link to yoper

[jsprat]

Since the submitter didn't provide a direct link to Yoper Linux, I will.

Does anyone else think it's strange that a story about yoper has no link to their home page, but does have a link to gentoo?

Re:Link to yoper

[ttldkns]

the Yoper website is slashdotted pretty bad too now, heres a link to their torrent though, so we can all download a copy, its practically empty at the moment!! http://apt.yoper.com/torrent/yoper.torrent

Re:eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

yo.per - n. One who yopes. See "yope" yope - v. slang term from 1980's era to describe slow communication with poor diction. Warning: mysql_connect(): Too many connections in /usr/local/apache/vhosts/linuxforums.org/www/forum /db/mysql4.php on line 49

Corel Link

[Anonymous Coward]

Corel Link

Re:Corel Link

[nuclear305]

Unfortunately Corel doesn't help when the server caches the error page...

Warning: mysql_connect(): Too many connections in /usr/local/apache/vhosts/linuxforums.org/www/forum /db/mysql4.php on line 49

Gentoo Competition?

[TheLastUser]

Yoper Linux really does look like it could be the first serious competition Gentoo has had in a long time.

For what? "The worst installer of all time", or "The most time consuming distro ever".

Re:Gentoo Competition?

[maskedbishounen]

Yes, the computer operator. And you just admitted the joke is true!

(Sorry, I would have posted this earlier, but I was busy compiling some cookies in the kitchen. USE="chocolatechunk" ;))

Re:Gentoo Competition?

[moosesocks]

Clearly you joke.

Gentoo users pride themselves upon the fact that there is no installer for gentoo.

But they will insist that the documentation is very nice.

That is --- when they're not compiling. A decent installation (comprable to a stripped-down Fedora/Debian/Knoppix) took about a week to compile on a Duron 800 I used for the experiement.

I think that was what made me convinced that PC users truly are insane and got a mac.

Re:Gentoo Competition?

[nutshell42]

"The worst installer of all time"

That prize would go to Debian (the old installer I don't know about the knew). The gentoo installer may be rather spartan (i.e. there is none) but their documentation is top notch and I generally had much less troubles installing gentoo than debian. Knoppix changed that because it is a fast and easy way to get a debian running and requires only a fast and easy upgrade to unstable.

"The most time consuming distro ever"

That sounds more like gentoo. I still shudder when thinking about the time I had compiled KDE and Gnome in one go only to notice that I'd forgotten some make.conf flag. =P

Re:Gentoo Competition?

[mark_lybarger]

the documentation is good as long as things don't go wrong. when things go bad there's nothing that points what you need to do. configuring xorg? good luck. hope you have plenty of hardware manuals around and access to plenty of time to spend in the forums/irc.

Re:Gentoo Competition?

[Erik Hollensbe]

Ugh. I've done the gentoo install several times, then I found this great routine to make it faster:

1) Download 2 floppies containing the FreeBSD install
2) FTP install "minimal" distribution - on a nice cable connection this whole process takes about 10 minutes.
3) Reboot
4) pkg_add -r cvsup
5) Copy and edit /usr/share/examples/stable-supfile (if you want ports, ports-supfile as well)
6) cvsup stable-supfile
7) configure kernel and world
8) shutdown now (single user mode)
9) edit /etc/defaults/make.conf
10) mergemaster -p, make installworld, mergemaster
11) Reboot

No partition bullshit, full install available WHILE you're "tricking out your system" (read: the system can be configured WHILE you're doing all that compile B.S.), and 90% of the real work is done for you. You need 2 floppies to start. And I'll take ports over portage any day of the week, because when I want gnome, I type this:

pkg_add -r gnome (or something similar)

and it doesn't take 3 weeks to install it.

(I apologize for sounding so rude - it's just beyond me why people actually put so much work into getting that whopping 5% speed increase or whatever - all that time lost compiling crap could be used getting actual work done on the system.)

Re:Gentoo Competition?

[Erik Hollensbe]

It's more like what work it's keeping me from being able to do.

Let's say I want to evaluate several large programs.

I can emerge/use ports for all of them, or I can pkg_add -r and play with them now. All the builds in the package repository are well-tested and I can be sure if the program is going to work at all, it's going to work with pkg_add installation.

I can't recall a time where I've been prompted for interaction with pkg_add, but I'm sure it's possible.

OTOH, with a minimal freebsd install I can configure the machine with a base system already installed and pre-configured while I'm adding any other software.

Another good example:

Shit has hit the fan/boss is hanging over my neck/whatever. I need to install program X to get my work done, money is being lost, customers are frustrated, whatever.

Do I want my program 2 hours from now? No. I want it yesterday. pkg_add/apt/yast/any other binary package installer that resolves dependencies gives me that power, and it's guaranteed to work.

And like I said, twiddling every bit to get your whopping 5% performance increase or less really means jack squat when you're doing a server build. Heck, for all the time your boss spent paying you to tweak gentoo to get that performance boost, he could have spent a 1/4 of that on more ram, faster drives/processor, whatever. Besides, real performance comes from properly architecting your farm, if you're relying on that 5% boost to serve more pages/process more mail/whatever, you're going to be surprised when it really hits the fan.

A binary/source based distro (I know of no package format these days that is binary-only, unless slackware still uses pkgtool and tar.gz packages) has more benefits than just quick installation, as well.

Need to roll out a custom version of package X? Compile once/package/distribute.

So tell me again how this causes YOU anymore work? It doesn't it simply takes advantage of your (probably) mostly idle system, and does a little more than copying files from a CD/ftp mirror to your hard disk.

I apologize for my laughter.

You do know that compiles take processor time, right? Generally they peg the processor for a good deal of time and in many cases, use a good deal of memory. Hope you're not doing anything important when that's going on.

Really though, if gentoo is good for you, great. Enjoy playing with use flags with experimental compilers on your overpriced workstation while I get real work done. :)

Re:Gentoo Competition?

[Joey Vegetables]

I've had the opposite experience - not a single problem in 2+ years of fairly heavy use that forums.gentoo.org hadn't already addressed.

Re:Gentoo Competition?

[mark_lybarger]

i never said the answers weren't out there, but they're not documented very clearly, and most times not easy to find.

forums are nice, but oftentimes people like to drag out the discussions. for instance, a discussion on how to get swsusp2 working (resume from disk primarily for laptop ( http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=170548&hi ghlight= ) has 8 pages of posts. a post regarding x.org's latest release was started on Aug 11th, and has 44, count 'um 44 pages of posts. good luck finding answers in there quickly.

also, gentoo's documentation heavily relies on the man pages and general project documentaiton of 3rd party software. configuring x.org for anything other than nvidia (or even their cards)? checkout x.org's configuration explanation. configuring samba, checkout samba's docs. wanna setup and use a firewire hdd? quickly searching the forums gives scattered tidbits of knowledge about how to do it.

again, the docs _are_ fairly good, but when something goes wrong, you're at the mercy of the forums and irc.

Re:Gentoo Competition?

[nutshell42]

Someone else already mentioned it:

The Forums. The best Linux forums I know. I use Debian for about 2 years now but I still look in the gentoo forums first when I have a problem, and the gentoo irc channel after that. Looking for accurate, up-to-date and helpful debian documentation is an exercise in frustration management

Re:Gentoo Competition?

[nutshell42]

What is the Gentoo Reference Platform?

The Gentoo Reference Platform, from now on abbreviated to GRP, is a snapshot of prebuilt packages users (that means you!) can install during the installation of Gentoo to speed up the installation process. The GRP consists of all packages required to have a fully functional Gentoo installation. They are not just the ones you need to have a base installation up to speed in no time, but all lengthier builds (such as KDE, xorg-x11, GNOME, OpenOffice, Mozilla, ...) are available as GRP packages too.

Re:Gentoo Competition?

[cayce]

> Enjoy playing with use flags with experimental
> compilers on your overpriced workstation while I
> get real work done. :)

Or while you post in slashdot. What's the difference anyway ? :)

Re:Gentoo Competition?

[Echo5ive]

And my file server (P3 450MHz) was up and running in less than an hour with Gentoo.

I installed a stage 3. You don't have to compile everything from scratch just because you can.

competition

[nocomment]

Yoper Linux really does look like it could be the first serious competition Gentoo has had in a long time.


uhhhh have you heard of Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, Debian, Turbo, etc...? First real competition...phht! Gimme a break.

Re:competition

[AhaIndia]

I think what the poster meant is to compare in terms of speed and performance.
Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, Debian, Turbo etc. all are fine, but Gentoo is supposed to be faster among these because its compiling from the source for your machine.
Yoper, is already made i686 optimized using viarious optimization and performance enhancement techniques. Its creator clearly says that these methods of optimization can be used with any other distro by an experienced person, but what they offer is a distro for the people new to linux that just works and works fast.
A very short review from a user of Yoper at http://azeemarif.blogspot.com

Re:Too many Distros

[BinLadenMyHero]

We do need more than 10 distros, just as we need many languages. The best for you is not the best for me, as there are thousand ways to use Linux for, and each distro can be better for a specific need. There are distros good for low resource computers, others for embeded systems, others for firewalls and simple servers, others for the end-users migrating from Windows, others that compiles everything from source, etc.

I, for one, prefer Slackware: it's simpler, and it makes it easier (for me!) to maintain.

Beating Gentoo?

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who runs Gentoo on his home machine, I have to agree with some of the sentiment expressed around here: beat Gentoo at what?

I think Gentoo is a great desktop distribution for someone who has a lot of time on their hands and is capable of doing things manually. However, I wouldn't recommend Gentoo for use on an important sever, nor would I recommend Gentoo to use for someone who doesn't have a lot of time or who is incapable of doing some complex things by hand.

I think Gentoo right now is one of the better hobby/tweaking distributions, but I really don't think that's the usershare Yoper is going after.

Re:Beating Gentoo?

[SoCalChris]

Personally, I learned a lot about Linux from Gentoo. I had installed and used Mandrake for a few months before trying Gentoo, so I wasn't a complete Linux newbie, but I didn't really know much about it.

Going through a complete Gentoo install from a stage 1 tarball taught me a lot, probably more than I could have picked up out of a book or two.

I still mainly use Windows, but that's because I develop Windows apps for a living. I still enjoy messing around with Linux though.

Re:Beating Gentoo?

[UnseenEnigma]

I definitely have to disagree. Ive used gentoo for both a server and desktop and find its a great system for deploying a massively customized, secured, reliable, server quickly and reliably. I used gentoo when I created a 8 system (2/2/4 node clusters) for a ldap authenticated webmail / terminal system for my final project. I installed all 8 systems without a hitch fully optimized in 1 week.

Re:Beating Gentoo?

[fcgreg]

I'd like to stay on topic here... but since you've planted some digs against Gentoo, I feel compelled to respond.

I run many production systems for different purposes using Gentoo Linux as the OS. Gentoo can be whatever you want it to be. For me it is a stable, customized, highly efficient server, desktop, whatever. There is nothing any more manual about using this distro than any other, depending on the administrator and system setup/configuration.

While I agree with your comment that Gentoo is not for everyone, neither is a high-powered sports-car. Your limited experience with it as a desktop machine doesn't warrant a blanket discounting of the distro for server uses or anything else.

I'll stop feeding the trolls now. :)

Re:Beating Gentoo?

[zuesse]

I use Gentoo at home as well as an enterprise (someone please define) server. Gentoo is uniquely qualified as a single or finite purpose server. I have several Gentoo boxes providing a range of services from firewall to mail and one central portage host.

But, alas, it's not your fathers Olsmobile. When my mother inlaw asked me to put linux on her machine, WhiteBox was the obvious choice.

Right Tool for Right Job!

'tsallinux, 'tsalgood.

Re:Beating Gentoo?

[Zebbers]

What are you talking about?
The time taken on the initial install, (you can walk away for compiles bub) is more than made up in the time you save searching for packs, dl them and dependency checking. Once running it's no less stable than any other system. I mean. I installed once, which granted with X and KDE, etc took some time but after that its just on. You can start from a stage 3 which is pretty highlevel and go from there.

But as others have said, Gentoo is about control and configuration, not compilation. Thats more of a requirement for the level of control.

That's great

[prisoner]

there's plenty of competition in the linux sector. Now if we could just get someone to make a distro that actually competes with windows we'd be all set. If you want to flame me, please include an answer as to why in the world I would have to edit my yum.conf file to install a dvd player and compare that to the difficulties of installing the same software on windows. If you are stumped as to why I ask this, then employ your sage wisdom and explain why the average user would be excited about spending hours on usenet trying to figure out how to accomplish the most mundane tasks on linux. I love linux - it's my swiss army knife of choice but a desktop replacement? Yeah, I'm off topic, bite me.

Re:That's great

[Spyro VII]

Oh, you mean this one? Of course, mandrake is not the only "desktop distro" out there right now, but it's the best windows replacement distro that I've found so far. I have set up a number of PCs for friends and family running mandrake and they haven't had any problems yet. Of course, some things can give you trouble (certain hardware combinations), but the fact of the matter is that people like you need to get out of their shells and realize that there are distros out there that are bridging the desktop gap. And you need to either support them or atleast acknowledge their existence.

Re:That's great

[el-spectre]

I'm wondering myself why you'd edit yum.conf ... I'd just get the updated one from the Fedora Faq.

We're still getting there. Right now, linux DOES compete with windows, in the 'good with computers' or better class of folks. 5 years ago you had to be much more advanced. Over time, the OS is getting better, but folks (especially linux savvy folks such as yourself) don't help things any by standing around and whining that it's not perfect RIGHT NOW.

Re:That's great

[ShavenYak]

Don't confuse technology with legal issues.

Pretend for a moment I'm Joe Sixpack. Why do I care whether it's a technology issue or a legal issue? All I know is something doesn't work out of the box, and it worked on Windows. I immediately lose some of my confidence in this new Linux thing.

Re:That's great

[el-spectre]

And Joe Sixpack is gonna know how to use yum, apt-get or emerge?

Besides, it doesn't matter whether you CARE or not, it's still an important consideration. If MS bundles a player with the OS, it's because they paid the appropriate royalties, and pass that cost on to you. A free (beer) distro can't be expected to do that.

If you want a similar experience, pay for the Mandrake distro that costs $60 or whatever it is, and has 3 extra disks of apps. Royalties paid, rights respected, and an easier user experience.

Re:That's great

[cortana]

Come on, it's not quite that simple on Debian.

:) 00:16 sam@xerces ~
$ apt-cache policy mplayer
mplayer:
Installed: (none)
Candidate: (none)
Version Table:

For legal reasons, Debian cannot distribute mplayer.

:) 00:16 sam@xerces ~
$ apt-cache policy mplayer-k6
mplayer-k6:
Installed: 1:1.0-pre5-sarge0.3
Candidate: 1:1.0-pre5-sarge0.3
Version Table:
*** 1:1.0-pre5-sarge0.3 0
500 ftp://ftp.nerim.net testing/main Packages
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

So you have to add a line to /etc/apt/sources.list, run apt-get update and _then_ apt-get install mplayer-$architecture.

Re:That's great

[Martin Blank]

I throw in occasional extra servers into yum.conf that aren't there because the ones that are listed in the Fedora Faq get hammered sometimes. It's useful to have some lesser-known, higher-bandwidth locations to use when major patches come out.

Re:That's great

[be-fan]

Last I checked, Windows doesn't play DVDs out of the box. Or Divx's, for that matter. Yet, people somehow manage to do both...

Re:That's great

[prisoner]

"but let's not put windows on too high a pedestal"

fair enough but your characterization of installing a DVD player on windows is out of proportion. I just bought a $35 DVD drive that came with a copy of power dvd. Not a great program but it works and all I had to do was stick the CD in and it installed, the S/N was on a sticker right on the sleeve. I was driven to this after spending 2.5 hours trying to get the mother@#$#@!$#$ing DVD player software installed on linux. I tried following the directions and wound up with jack. The final straw started when I had to edit yum.conf (what a name) with a longish string. I edited it, ran the update command and watched as it downloaded god only knows what for the next half hour (on a T-1 line). Maybe I went about it wrong but it just shouldn't be that hard. I think linux is great, it's my swiss-army knife for just about everything. I like nothing better than to whip out a copy of linux and solve a problem for almost nothing that somebody wanted to sell me a $2000 solution for. However, a desktop replacement? Not yet.

Re:That's great

[Scaba]

I tried following the directions and wound up with jack.

Ahhh, you must have followed the wrong directions. Jack is a low-latency audio server, designed for professional audio work. Maybe you should consider KPlayer, the wonderful KDE frontend to mplayer?

Re:That's great

[marsu_k]

Yeah, it's a bitch to get DVDs to work in Mandrake as well. I mean, you have to configure your urpmi sources (can be done graphically as well if you prefer), type 'urpmi ogle_gui libdvdcss' to a terminal and only then will you be able to watch DVDs from any region with menus and all. Windows sure makes it easier.

Re:That's great

[be-fan]

Media player doesn't play DVDs out of box. You have to install a DVD plug-in.

Re:Too many Distros

[Chrax]

Agreed. What I see as one of the great things about Linux is that it can be customized in so many ways. Of course nothing will fit your needs exactly like an LFS, but having a lot of distros means you're more likely to find one that is pretty close to what you need.

How Gentoo won the community

[Anonymous Coward]

Gentoo was good at their marketing, and that was by winning over Linux users / newbies by packaging games with their product which most distros don't.

Personally, Gentoo is crap in my opinion.. Sure building from source is nice and all, but the speed difference is barely noticeable comparing between other distros. Them redefining the standard UFS is complete crap and doesn't make sense on WHY?

The LPI cert info they offer through IBM is horrible, incorrect in some areas and based mainly around their distro.

The only thing they got going for them is the multiple architecture support.

Re:How Gentoo won the community

[Anonymous Coward]

"Personally, Gentoo is crap in my opinion.. Sure building from source is nice and all, but the speed difference is barely noticeable comparing between other distros."

I fail to see how that makes Gentoo "crap". I'd run Gentoo even if it ran exactly the same speed as other distributions. It has a lot of up-to-date software available, all of which is easy to install and upgrade.

How does that make it a crappy distribution?

For reference, I've taken my two year old Gentoo installation from running GNOME 2.0 on a 2.4 kernel with devfs to running GNOME 2.8 on a 2.6 kernel with udev. All without ever doing a reinstallation.

That qualifies it as at least a decent distribution in my book.

Re:How Gentoo won the community

[hotspotbloc]

but the speed difference is barely noticeable comparing between other distros.

Check out Mandrake 9.1 vs Gentoo 1.4. IMO there's a big speed avantage over some of distros simply because it's quite easy to tune and tweak a Gentoo install not to load drivers or programs it doesn't need. Comparing Suse 9.1 Pro to Gentoo (I backed up my Gentoo box, wiped the drive, installed, tested and by the end of the day had Gentoo back on), Gentoo won the speed contest hands down.

The only thing they got going for them is the multiple architecture support.

I think Portage is pretty cool. It's the only distro that I've use that could install mplayer correctly the first time (emerge mplayer). Gentoo is hardly perfect but it is a very stable distro with unique features. I've been using it for over a year now and have yet to find anything better for my purposes and in my opinion.

No GNU/Linux distro is the best for everyone. Having choices is a good thing. Gentoo isn't for everyone but is pretty damn good.

Re:How Gentoo won the community

[Chuck Bucket]

great comment, thanks for making it. by chance today I did an 'emerge mplayer' on my iBook running Gentoo, and yep, it installed/worked pefectly.

PCVH$^CB

Re:How Gentoo won the community

[Stevyn]

I don't use Gentoo just because it's a little faster than other distros. It does feel faster than Mandrake 10 and Fedora 2. I use Gentoo because I find portage to be a lot better than URPMI which I tried to use for a while. I had trouble because I wanted a package that was less than 8 months old. Upgrading packages meant compiling from source. That's not a big deal until you have 4 layers of dependencies and you've wasted two hours and you still don't have the package. I'd rather let portage chug and churn for two hours than I having to do the work.

Re:How Gentoo won the community

[Pete]

I think Portage is pretty cool. It's the only distro that I've use that could install mplayer correctly the first time ( emerge mplayer).

pacman -S mplayer

*shrug, grin*

(come on, how could anyone resist a distro with a package manager called "pacman"? :-)

Re:if their webserver is any indication.. then no.

[starphish]

Yoper's website works fine for me. Or are you refering to linuxforums.org?

.torrent for latest version

[chickenmonger]

http://apt.yoper.com/torrent/yoper.torrent

Help save their gracious FTP mirrors.

Re:.torrent for latest version

[Hiro2k]

LOL I thought it said it has i386 # of pieces!

Re:.torrent for latest version

[terrencefw]

Help save their gracious FTP mirrors.

Yup, I have the torrent running now, and will probably keep it up for the rest of the week at least. It's nice and fast at the moment so lets keep it that way. Just a small plug... ;-) If you <can't | don't want to> download it, you can mail order it from me.

Re:Too many Distros

[Bungopolis]

There's nothing wrong with variety here. The more diversity there is, the more likely natural consumer selection is to result in the dominance of truly better software for everybody.

Office Speed

[rjstanford]

Its funny - I haven't really tried open office at all lately, since I use Linux exclusively for server tasks (and we have full MSFT licenses), but this particular snippet caught my eye:

Yoper's speed is evident mostly in everyday functions, such a opening a OpenOffice document. I have always found OpenOffice.org to open painfully slowly, but the start time in Yoper was impressive. In most systems it can take 15-20 seconds to start the massive OpenOffice, Yoper manages this in about 10 (on my machine, these are not official numbers from OpenOffice, just mine).

His machine is a P4/1.8ghz/512mb box. Is it really noteworthy when an office suite opens in <sarcasm>about 10 seconds</sarcasm%gt; on a machine of that class? Really? Wow. That's ... pretty sad.

Other than that, the experience looked promising. Does anyone know if it works as well with apt as Debian does? Or as poorly?

Re:Office Speed

[FyRE666]

Not only that, but it's pretty simple to speed up OO's load time dramatically just by increasing the memory settings within OO. I'm puzzled as to why they're so low to start with to be honest.

It is still a slug though - my work machine takes a good 15 seconds to load it up (P4 2.6ghz, FC2, 384MB, slowish 40GB HD); I use Gnumeric for spreadsheet work, since OO Calc takes so damned long to get going even once it's cached.

Re:Office Speed

[extra the woos]

"I haven't tried open office at all lately" "Is it really noteworthy when an office suite opens in about 10 seconds"

Unless its pre-loaded with the quick launcher in windows or you got some pretty fast shit, yeah its pretty great (when its open office!, ms office is a LOT faster to start up)...

Let it be said I have a fast a64 with a lot of fast ram and serial ata hdd, and open office still loads pretty friggin slowly. Yet it does load fast in yoper (the distro i've been using since i discovered it last week lol, before i always used debian)...

So yeah, it's pretty sad when stuff loads that slowly, but its not yoper being sad, its the slowness of open office being sad.... which is why if ya got a slow (less than 1ghz) machine I say use abiword WHENEVER POSSIBLE lol it hauls ass...

Also keep in mind someone's 1.8ghz p4 is not that fast of a machine... It's probably one of those cheap black and grey dells or something with a 5400rpm 512k cache slowwww ass hdds...

Re:Office Speed

[EvanED]

Start up times under Windows:

MS Word - 10 sec
OO Writer - 12 sec

Sad? Yes. But specific to OO.org? No.

Re:Office Speed

[HermanAB]

Doesn't make sense.

On my VIA Nehemia 1GHz (which is about equivalent to a Pentium III at 500MHz) with Mandrake 10.0, MS Word on CxOffice starts up in 7 seconds and OpenOfice.org Writer starts up in 8 seconds.

So, on a P4 at 1.8GHz, either word processor should start in about 3 seconds.

Re:Office Speed

[adiposity]

P3 700, Win2k SP4:

Word 2000: 2 seconds (first time)
Word 2000: 0 seconds (second time) It literally just pops up...something OpenOffice has never done for me.

OpenOffice 1.1.2: 16 seconds (first time)
OpenOffice 1.1.2: 3 seconds (second time)

I include the second time to see how much caching helps, but this has been typical for me since the first OpenOffice. It takes a bloody long time to start.

I don't know what the latest OpenOffice is; perhaps it has sped up quite a bit. But I'm using Word 2000, and I know OpenOffice 1.1.2 is newer than that.

-Dan

Re:Office Speed

[Uggy]

Actually, I'm running a crappy old PIII 600 with 256 Meg RAM. The new openoffice-ximian build with kde integration (native widgets) launches in 7-10 seconds (takes over 24 hrs to build though *G*).

On a LTSP setup (PIV 2.8 with 1 Gig RAM) I've got with a client (~15 users), it launches nearly instantaneously. Newer OO builds are looking really sweet and speed issues are definitely being worked on. I can actually comfortably tolerate it on a PII 450 with 128 Meg RAM. Not saying it's the best, but for 6 year old hardware, that's not bad.

Re:Office Speed

[Cochonou]

1- Being a "P4/1.8ghz/512mb" doesn't say much about the performance of the disks.
2- 10 seconds to wait for launching the office suite is not much. If you can not stand waiting 10 seconds, you're just being impatient.

Re:Office Speed

[steve's nose is blee]

Does anyone know if it works as well with apt as Debian does? Or as poorly?

I've only used debian a handfull of times, but by reputation apt on Debian "just works."

Yoper's apt works just fine. OTOH, if you prefer portage, apt-get install emerge will install with no fuss and you can use that.

Re:Office Speed

[OneOver137]

Mac Word 2004 on a PB 667 w/10.3.5

First time: 10s
Second time: 3s

I curious, how long does caching last? Logout or is it time based?

Re:Office Speed

[thinkninja]

Does anyone know if it works as well with apt as Debian does? Or as poorly?

Apt is poor, huh? Guess I missed the memo. Anyway, it looks like it used apt4rpm: ftp://apt.yoper.com/yoper/

Re:Office Speed

[Anonymous Coward]

What you may not realize is that Windows will pre-load MS apps like Word when it boots up. That's why it takes so long! You could do the same with OO on your Linux machine if you like. Personally, I can wait a dozen seconds for the word processor to come up because I do not use it often.

Re:Too many Distros

[mgrassi99]

Care you elaborate? I've toyed around with Slackware, Redhat, and Debian (in the form of Xebian and KnoppMyth - a Knoppix re-package) and it seems that if you install the right packages any one could be made to function as well as another (of course my experience may be limited). What distros are better than others at what specific tasks? -Mike

Re:if their webserver is any indication.. then no.

[extra the woos]

except its not the yoper web site (which is up and running just fine)... thats like saying debian sucks because a site that posted a review of debian got /.'d...

btw, yes, this is being typed from yoper right now, been using it for a few days, its awesome. Yoper for desktops, debian for servers, thats my story and i'm stickin' to it.

not gpl compliant

[BlueLines]

how can yoper claim to be "100% gpl compliant" when it includes nvidia's drivers?

Re:not gpl compliant

[CoolMoDee]

that is gpl compliant. It just dosn't contain 100% "free software"

Re:not gpl compliant

[sydb]

So they get brownie points for not breeching someone's license? How considerate of you (and the reviewer).

Re:not gpl compliant

[r00zky]

It also includes XFree86 4.4.0 (yopper pkg list)

Wasn't there some license problems with that?
I mean, most distributions seem to have switched to X.org

Re:not gpl compliant

[steve's nose is blee]

We've been talking about x.org vs XFree over on the yoper forums, right now the developers have said they feel stability is more important than the license change. Yoper will most likely change over to x.org, just not right this second. A lot of testing will be done before a change like that is made.

Google?

[bluewee]

Results 1 - 10 of about 269,000 for yoper. (0.14 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 3,130,000 for gentoo [definition]. (0.11 seconds)

Well there you have it people gentoo is the clear winner...

here are some more for comparison:
Results 1 - 10 of about 11,500,000 for suse [definition]. (0.19 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 26,300,000 for debian [definition]. (0.14 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 122,000,000 for windows [definition]. (0.31 seconds)
Results 1 - 10 of about 3,350,000 for google os. (0.23 seconds) ... o_0

Re:Google?

[LMcCabe]

Does the google search speeds provide further proof that gentoo is the fastest dist? ;)

I like it

[sometwo]

I've been using Mandrake for over 1 year. But am happy I've changed completely to Yoper. It's much faster; no more 15 seconds waiting for an app to fire. Also being part of a constantly evolving new distro makes it all more personal and significant. Sure there are packages missing. So we always can learn to build our own and add it to Yoper's repository. Rather than just sit back and complain. It's a very friendly and welcoming community there, no power battles or l33t t4lk - pretty cool methinks.

Re:I like it

[HermanAB]

I don't get it. My miniITX VIA Nehemiah 1GHz with Mandrake 10.0 starts OpenOffice Writer in 8 seconds. A VIA 1GHz is about equivalent to a 500MHz Pentium.

Nothing ever takes 15 seconds to load, unless there is something wrong, in which case it won't start at all.

I do have 512MB RAM in this little machine, maybe that makes the difference?

Re:I like it

[The MESMERIC]

Shut up
It's my post
And what the heck is "swith"?

You goth a listhp? or juth-a-thypo?

Mod Parent Down

[Anonymous Coward]

> a) It's a copyright violation

True, but there's no down-mod for that.

> b) It's karma whoring

Maybe, but there's no down-mod for that either.

c) It's informative

Re:Prelinking in Gentoo?

[swarsron]

emerge sys-devel/prelink was there for a long time

Mod Parent Down (the downmoding one)

[imsabbel]

Links to forum-posts are idiocy. Of course the article is no longer reachable, and wont be the next hours/days.

Re:Too many Distros

[mrchaotica]

Maybe what you need is a metadistribution (see first paragraph), then. That way, your firewall, desktop, and cluster can all be managed the same way and and you don't have to go through special effort to change a piece of software to work with all of them.

Prelinking

[Anonymous Coward]

Something not mentioned in the review: you can also prelink in Gentoo. How do prelinked Gentoo systems stack up to Yoper? I got a big speed kick on startup times when I prelinked my Gentoo system.

Note also, performance != app startup time execlusively.

Not too intimidating...

[mod_parent_down]

After downloading the single ISO and burning it, I booted into a BASH prompt. This might sound intimidating to those newer to Linux... A little fiddling reviled that the prompt had a few basic commands such as mount and access to Vim.

Oh yeah. If you're intimidated by a Bash prompt, you're gonna LOVE vim.

Ok, Lemme just type--

BEEP!

What the...

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

Ah! I just want to edit the--

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!!!

AHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Re:Not too intimidating...

[extra the woos]

I have no idea how to use vim... if i hafta type something out when i'm not in x i use joe, its simple and behaves like a text editor should (i'm a long time windows user!).....

but the point is that you can use the yoper install cd as a rescue disc very very easily (i have, when grub didn't work right, i just booted it up and ran lilo)

Re:Not too intimidating...

[wertarbyte]

At least they don't let you drop into the consistent user interface of ed.
?

Re:Not too intimidating...

[Dan667]

It takes less time for me to escape Mars in Doom3 than exit vim

Re:Not too intimidating...

[moosesocks]

That's funny. I didn't know Ellen Feiss switched to linux...

Remembering the Yoper Jerk

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone remember the jerk from Yoper who was badmouthing the /. crowd? Yoper wanted $99 for their distro, and they bragged heavily. People started to call BS, and the Yoper jerk went berserk. That was the first time I ever heard of Yoper and the last time I cared. At least they learned what bad PR can do for business (Yoper is free now--ha!).

Re:Remembering the Yoper Jerk

[Anonymous Coward]

He's quoted here in an old /. article from when the flamewar was going on in the Yoper forums.

Re:Remembering the Yoper Jerk

[ananke]

Yeah, I've been trying to find the slashdot story on that. I remember reading yoper's own web pages, where the developer/developers were basically trashing their [potential] users. Like you said: thanks, but no thanks.

Yoper suspicious

[ashpool7]

Does no-one remember back when Yoper went 1.0 and was on Slashdot? Seemed pretty suspicious if you ask me.

Since the site is slashdotted, it's hard to see if anything has changed in a year.

Re:Yoper suspicious

[pnot]

I looked into it when it made its debut a couple of years back. Several things made me uneasy. IIRC:

1. It seemed to launch with huge fanfare and hype, and there was a bit of a backlash when it turned out to be just another "generic distro plus knoppix hardware detection" deal.

2. Source wasn't originally available, so it was infringing on the GPL.

3. They were very reticent about acknowledging the work they'd built on, and responded quite violently to any criticism.

I had a poke about their website recently, the things that now make me uneasy are:

1. Package availability -- according to this declaration, you can only install Yoper-packaged RPMs ("The ones for other distros have to probably be installed with rpm -Uvh --force --nodeps and might break apt.").

2. Lack of decent documentation -- lots of important information seems to be squirreled away in the forums.

3. Amateurish website ("Yoper is one of the most standardised Linuxes that you will find and hardware performancetries to be better better than that of any commercial OS." -- http://www.yoper.com/about.html )

3. Responses to criticism still seem pretty belligerent, not to mention self-contradictory. A forum post from March 2003 says:

We are not a one man distro. Currently we have hundreds of users and several people on the development team and also a new commercial team that does the commercial side here in NZ. ( original post )

Then, in October 2003:

Some of you compile quite a few packages, which is great!!!! The base Yoper is done by ONE person and this person (ME) has a distro which is now fairly well known even though it is only version 1. Just think of this. Yoper is a one man distro and so many have an opinion on it. ( original post )

So, is it a one-man distro or not?

Still, it seems they're no longer trying to flog it for 99 USD, which makes me think a little more kindly of it :-).

Re:Yoper suspicious

[steve's nose is blee]

Let's talk friend, I've been using Yoper, along with several other distros for a few years now, I remember the nonsense that went on when the forums were slashdotted the first time. A large group of slackware users/fans decided to flame the admin repeatedly on the forums. Those "belligerent" responses were a direct result of that.

Yoper can install packages from a couple different sources, .tgz, .rpm, and has support for apt and emerge. Would you try installing debs on a SUSE system and expect it to always work? That's the essence of what Andreas was saying in that post you're talking about. Most packages DO install just fine on yoper. Apt works great in Yoper as well, there's a large repository and more packages are added daily, I don't know about it breaking apt, I've installed some "ecletic" stuff without breaking apt, so I don't know on that one.

Source was always available, just not always downloadable.

There are some problems with it, it's a "relatively" new distro, most things work great, you have to fix a dependency here and there, make a symlink or two now and then. I'm not a guru by any means and I haven't run into any problems I can't solve with a little googling and forum searching.

Give the little guy a chance!

BTW, Andreas is the guy behind the distro, english was not his first language (cut the site some slack) and he's a programmer, not a Public Relations Rep.

Re:Yoper suspicious

[pnot]

A large group of slackware users/fans decided to flame the admin repeatedly on the forums. Those "belligerent" responses were a direct result of that.

I remember it somewhat differently; unfortunately the posts were deleted by the admin. This is why I think that responding to criticism is preferable to deleting it: there's no way to determine in hindsight whether the criticism was valid.

Would you try installing debs on a SUSE system and expect it to always work?

The difference is that I can expect to find most of the software I want as a SuSE-compatible RPM. Yoper is a far less popular distro, so I'm concerned that not much software is available unless you resort to non-Yoper RPMs, which might break the system.

Give the little guy a chance!

Is he a little guy or not? One minute it's a professional-grade distro with x thousand downloads, a large user base, a substantial development team and a "commercial team". As soon as any criticism arises, it's "well, what do you expect from a one-man distro?". You can't have it both ways.

Andreas is the guy behind the distro, english was not his first language (cut the site some slack) and he's a programmer, not a Public Relations Rep

But he claims to have "hundreds of users and several people on the development team and also a new commercial team that does the commercial side here in NZ". Presumably one of these hundreds of minions wouldn't mind proofreading the website. Shouldn't crafting a decent website be the job of the Yoper commercial team?

I have nothing against Yoper or Andreas. I think it's great that free software is good enough that one person can put together a working distro. And I don't believe that a one-man distro has to be flakey -- look at Knoppix, or Mepis. But most of the good stuff I've heard about Knoppix and Mepis is from independent sources; most of the good stuff I've heard about Yoper is from Yoper's website, which states that criticism will be deleted from its forums. Evenhanded evaluation is thus hard to come by.

Re:Yoper suspicious

[steve's nose is blee]

I remember it somewhat differently; unfortunately the posts were deleted by the admin. This is why I think that responding to criticism is preferable to deleting it: there's no way to determine in hindsight whether the criticism was valid.

Granted each will see things differently, and I agree that it was a mistake to delete all of those postings. Although I did read several large threads of nonsense that was users taking advantage of anonymous posting. (Not just slackers although it was a common thread)

But he claims to have "hundreds of users and several people on the development team and also a new commercial team that does the commercial side here in NZ". Presumably one of these hundreds of minions wouldn't mind proofreading the website. Shouldn't crafting a decent website be the job of the Yoper commercial team?

Hundreds of users, yes, not hundreds of employees and developers. My "little guy" comment was in comparison to SUSE, Mandrake, Red Hat, and Debian with their Millions of installs worldwide. I don't know anything about the commercial side of yoper, I'm on a whole other continent so I can't post much about that. As for the website, I was actually going to ask permission to rewrite certain sections of it, along with some of the instructions in the installer and FAQ. =)

I can see what you're saying about packages, I don't think it should be a huge concern, the repository really is rather large and when someone requests something be added, it's usually added within a week if not sooner. About a week ago someone posted a requst in the forums for "Bibletime" the latest version was in the repository within 2-3 days.

I see this linuxforums review as outside affirmation, there's other reviews of the distro out there. (The linked site isn't yoper's) but the best test of the distro is really to run it yourself and see if you like it.

Re:Too many Distros

[nizo]

Why not a few good distros with kickbutt installers that let you install EXACTLY what you want? Instead of everyone wasting their time working on 100+ piddly distros? A few distros (light version=as small as possible, general version=bloat to the max, and maybe a newbie friendly version). Don't get me wrong, choice is a great thing, but at what point are people just wasting their time making YAD (Yet Another Distro)? And if I were creating software, which distro should I pick? Technically software should work great on any distro, but with so many distros/libraries out there, "out of the box" installs seem to be getting less and less common, which is a huge deal to linux newcomers.

Finally! Competition for Gentoo...

[MoThugz]

It's about time we had another souped up, optimized to the core, compiled from source, fear my USE flags distro to provide competition with Gentoo.

You know what they say... Monopoly is never a good thing ;)

Re:Finally! Competition for Gentoo...

[towndowner]

man, that link kind of got me into gentoo. but i drive a volvo stationwagon. much the same thing, but i can cross creeks.

first gentoo competitor?

[WhitePanther5000]

what about SourceMage? I use Gentoo, but I was considering SourceMage along the way, and it looks like a valid competitor.

Fast Yoper Torrent and info on Reiser4

[Anonymous Coward]

Fast Yoper Torrent from the Linux Mirror Project:
http://www.tlm-project.org/torrents/yoper/yos-i686 -2.1.0-4.iso.torrent

And on installing use the default Reiserfs(3). Don't use the new Reiser4, it's much slower, there's messages on Yoper.com forum. There is also some info about slow Reiser4 on Lwn:
http://lwn.net/Articles/99408/

Re:Is is LSB 2.0 compliant?

[kundor]

It apparently uses apt, not rpm.

So...no.

Re:Prelinking in Gentoo?

[Kristoffer Lunden]

When do you want it?

# emerge -s prelink
Searching...
[ Results for search key : prelink ]
[ Applications found : 1 ]

* sys-devel/prelink
Latest version available: 20040707
Latest version installed: [ Not Installed ]
Size of downloaded files: 881 kB
Homepage: ftp://people.redhat.com/jakub/prelink
Description: Modifies executables so runtime libraries load faster
License: GPL-2

Re:Confusion...

[oudzeeman]

It's called prebinding and it isn't a new idea. OS X has (had, this has been fixed in Tiger) a huge penalty for non pre-bound apps. I saw some tests that showed apps like photoshop were over 10 times slower starting up when it was not pre-bound. The difference in tiger is minnimal thanks to (if I recall correctly) a complete re-write of their ld (the linker). Instead of forcing prebinding why don't the Yoper guys put some work into makeing gnu ld more efficient?

Re:eh?

[kundor]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=56077&cid=5448 756

That yoper.

I just have to say

[Mr. Cancelled]

The hype is justified!

Yoper really is the next best thing to Gentoo for me, as far as Linux goes.

• It's more optimized than its comptetion (all the other non-enterprise, modern, cutting-edge desktop distros... Ark, JAMD, PCLinuxOS, etc.))
• It's using some of the best packages avail at the moment, in their latest incarnations
• It's setup in such a way that it could immediately be used as an office PC (aka as a Windows replacement), it's equally able to handle more "power-user" type people straight out of the box, with additional software available via a point and click GUI (Synaptic)
• While it's 'dumbed down' to the point that your average PC-based web surfer/emailer/im'er can start out right at home, it's just so fuckin' fast and optimized right out of the box that it'll impress even the most jaded Linux user.
• It's picking up momentum fast, so more and more of the popular packages (and in my opinion some really obscure ones - There's a lotta stuff 'ported for it' that I'd never expect -or use) are being put out. I'm really just talking compile optimizations and such, but they're all setup for the Yoper structure
• The hardware support is very nice. In fact, to me, the biggest "ooh!" about the most recent release is that it's the first Linux distribution that correctly identified and setup my Radeon 9600 card, with dual monitors. EVERY other distribution made me hand-edit the config files to make this work, and in some this cases never worked at all

It really is a slick system, and very deserving of the accolades it's starting to receive. To me, it's the distribution to judge others by (With the obvious exception of Gentoo, and other source-based distros).

If they can continue the momentum and build their software catalog (meaning compiled, optimized packages for Yoper), I can see Yoper easily winning the Desktop Linux race.

Oh, and for the record, if you've heard of any problems with their support, or OSS issues, it appears that this is very much a thing of the past. I was there for the beta testing, and I was one of the those who didn't like what happened after the release of v 1.0, and I can safely say that it appears that Yopers seen the light, and has remedied any problems they may have had. The Yoper community is also very good.

Check it out! You know you've installed dozens of Linux distributions already... What's one more going to hurt? It could change your usage of Linux.

Re:I just have to say

[Mr. Cancelled]

Gentoo is a source-based distro, so you have to keep that in mind. When you upgrade Gentoo, you're really downloading the source and recompiling everything.

Since Yoper is a "pre-compiled" distribution, you're downloading pre-built components, and replacing the old components with the new. So the process is totally different.

I think a lot of people are confusing the comparisons with Gentoo with how the Yoper system is built, which is more along the lines of a Suse, or Mandrake, or Fedora. Only in this case everythings hyper optimized for this particular architecture.

But to answer your question, upgrades for me have been effortless. You open Synaptic, update it's information, and then choose "upgrade". Simple stuff!

Re:I just have to say

[digime]

The hardware support is very nice. In fact, to me, the biggest "ooh!" about the most recent release is that it's the first Linux distribution that correctly identified and setup my Radeon 9600 card, with dual monitors.

Hey cool. But how is it that you got ATI support out-of-the-box when the Yoper development team says they haven't added it yet? From the article:

...(ATI support is not there yet), but after speaking with the development team I understand it is high on their To-Do list

...getting ATI was a bit of an adventure. It was fine in reasonable base resolutions and color depths, but it took me a good 30 min of fiddling in Sax2 to get 3D acceleration working. I ended up using the 9000 driver on my 8500.

Re:I just have to say

[Erik Hollensbe]

3D acceleration is quite different from a simple 2D setup. Sax2 comes from SuSE and I have never had a problem configuring my ATI cards with it - of course, as soon as I started tinkering with the proprietary ATI drivers to get the 3D acceleration, things started going sour very quickly.

Re:I just have to say

[digime]

You're right. Like some earlier comments (regarding ATI drivers & GPL compliance) I assumed he was using the official ATI drivers from ATI and had all features working. Instead he's using the equivalent of the "nv" driver (for NVidia cards) for ATI. That explains it.

Re:I just have to say

[Kristoffer Lunden]

I think the point was that Gentoo keeps track of everything you have installed, with dependencies and so on. And tells you when there is newer versions available... the typical Gentoo user never downloads another ISO. Even if new version numbered releases are made, the users out there already has everything in that because of daily upgrades. New versions are just fresher starting points for clean installs.

Precompiled or from source doesn't really matter in that case.

It does seem however then, that this Synaptic thing is doing much the same as portage does - if it handles dependencies as excellent then I'd be as happy using that.

The biggest deal for me with Gentoo is the repository of programs - it is incredible, and it is really, really, really up to date. Building from source is ok, tinkering with settings is fun and so on, but if another distro had an equal set of programs - and oh, such an enourmously helpful and non-elitist community - I'd try it out.

Speaking of the community: A lot of other distros followers really has a lot to learn from the mentality of the Gentoo users - even though it is a bit of a power distro, there are almost no elitist and just helpful people that actually tries to solve your problems. It is excellent!

It's from New Zealand

[Anonymous Coward]

It must be ph33red.

Re:Oooo! Talk about stuff no one cares about

[PaulBu]

Do you mean this Fatburger, my favorite burger place? ;-) Of course some people say that In-n-Out is better, but I totally disagree! And Fatburger would NEVER offer ham & swiss sandwich, do not troll us, true believers! ;-)

Paul B.

P.S. Yes, I do think that there is place in this world for many burger joints, even obscure ones; as well as for many "experimental" distros. From this article someone will learn about that "prelinking" thing and it might make his day. It's /., after all!

Re:Too many Distros

[secolactico]

I've toyed around with Slackware, Redhat, and Debian (in the form of Xebian and KnoppMyth - a Knoppix re-package) and it seems that if you install the right packages any one could be made to function as well as another (of course my experience may be limited). What distros are better than others at what specific tasks?

Yes, you can take a Debian box and transform it easily into a a firewall/proxy. But if you want some specific functionality, such as single button poweron/poweroff for a headless firewall box, without worryng whether its properly shutdown, or you want to admin it from a web browser, etc, you will have to toy with it until it works the way you want.

Other specific distros will do that right from install. No need to tweak. That's the idea behind so many distros.

Need a quick and dirty web/smtp/pop3 server, there's probably a distro for that. Just pop in the cd and install.

Heck, a lot of these distros are variants from the ones you mentioned. Think of them as pre-configured versions of Redhat, Debia, etc.

I don't use gentoo for *speed*, but *flexibility*

[Anonymous Coward]

This new distro looks interesting (runs KDE fast .. though I have long since switched to Mac OS X).

But I use gentoo on servers because of 1) the flexibility.. finally I can *remove* the crap dependencies like kerberos, etc, on package, and I can add the stuff I need (mbox vs. maildirs, etc).

and 2).. it is SO EASY to make ebuilds, and they really do keep track of the files correctly because of the sandbox concept. On our servers we use custom ebuilds to keep versions stable, we deploy apps to remote sites as ebuilds that automatically pull in dependencies, etc. I'm always amazed at how simple it is to whip up an ebuild. Just write a shell script that installs the files, basically. Compared to the bloated overengineered hell that is RPM, I was quite please.

I think people who think of gentoo as "that distro that lets you choose CFLAGS" are totally missing the point.. it's about flexibility and ease of building distros (i.e., a "meta-distro").

Re:Too many Distros

[AaronGTurner]

Configurability for specific purposes, should this be requiredexcellent Choicegood Too much choiceconsumers pick the simplest, most well-marketed option.

This goes for food as well as Linux, although there are always devotees that have loyalty to something unusual.

Linux would benefit from less brand confusion for desktop users, but benefits from the configurability for purposes not visible to desktop users (back end servers, set top boxes, embedded servers, mars rovers, etc).

As it is, there aren't that many well-known brands on the desktop: Linspire, Fedora, Suse, Debian, Knoppix, Gentoo, Lycoris, JDS, and for the Western world that is about it. In other parts of the world (e.g. TurboLinux, Star Linux) some of these are replaced by others, but the total number in any one market that have any great presence on the desktop are in the range of 5 to 10.

Re:Too many Distros

[AaronGTurner]

Ah... it seems that 'HTML Formatted' means

, , , but not ... should have RTFM.

difference between this and debian?

[dgr100]

i'm all for experimental distros that push innovation forwards - take the boot-from-cd version as an example - but Linux will suffer if the supple stagnates with very similar distros - for one thing talent and support is more sparsely spread between the communities... Which is why I wonder: this distro sounds a lot like a user centric version of Debian. Same package management, no compiling, pretty damn fast. So remind me. Why was it ever created in the first place, as opposed to the developers working on e.g. an install script that configures a Debian box for Joe public? And why compare it to Gentoo?

Re:Too many Distros

[Shulai]

Of course, if you *install* the *right* packages and *configure* them *properly* you should get similar results.
But then, you will have different degrees of effort achieving that with different distributions, giving each possible combination of task, skills and personal tastes.
Some distros have its emphasis in users with little knowledge, others are for Unix veterans, others for busy sysadmins with enterprise needs...
Want a more Unix like, structurally simple distro for small servers or hobbist use? Get Slackware. Want a sophisticated package management system and large, granular package collection? Get Debian. Want a distro with Enterprise features out of the box? Get SUSE. Want a distro for average end users? Get Xandros.
(Other popular distros/scenarios left out for the sake of simplicity).

Re:Confusion...

[AaronGTurner]

If they don't have the people to hand who have the expertise to do this they will take the path of least resistance and prebind instead. In the end for a desktop system most people just care that it is fast for them, not how it works (much like me and cars).

Re:Too many Distros

[Anonymous Coward]

We can settle for Debian, Suse and Redhat.

Funny group to settle for. I see you're very PC focused. Of the distros you picked, it's amazing that you selected the three with the _most_ overlap in functionality.

I don't want any of those running on my cell phone or my wireless router. I don't want any of those running on my company's beowulf cluster. I'm not even sure I want any of those running my firewall (though Debian is). I don't think foreign language people particularly care for those either, since they're quite european language focused.

How the hell did you come up with that list?

Re:eh?

[fcgreg]

Your URL is borked. Try this one:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=56077&cid=5448 756

Quick convert

[HungSquirrel]

I first tried Yoper two months ago and was an immediate and complete convert. You cannot possibly fathom how snappy this OS feels unless you've used Gentoo. I was absolutely blown away. It really breathes new life into my aging P3 500MHz laptop. Unlike Gentoo, you don't have to spend a week on the install to get a fast system.

On top of that, the install is one rather vanilla disc, allowing you to pick and choose other packages you want after installing. Why waste the extra time downloading three or four ISOs mostly filled with packages you don't need when you can download precompiled packages for the software you DO need at your leisure?

Yep, I'm a Yoper fanboy. I liked the distro so much I joined the team and started putting together packages. This is another area Yoper is good for: the entire team from the creator down to the lowly packagers will take time out of their day to help people in the forum. The team also welcomes anyone with useful skills. If you can use vi and run a shellscript, you can contribute to Yoper and the team invites you to do so. No BS distro politcs. Hands-on help for new users.

Re:Too many Distros

[OrangeTide]

"the linux name" ?

Are you implying that "the linux name" has value, or potentially could have value?

Re:ha

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this seems the opposite of Gentoo: Quoting TFA "The install was completed, start to finish, in under 15 minutes.".

These guys can't be beaten in how _quickly_ an install takes place. Gentoo can't be beaten in how _long_ an install takes.

Re:Confusion...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they aren't building their own prelinking software. They're just running prelink on the binaries before distributing them.

Here's the "homepage" according to Gentoo

Here's the Debian package page

You can run prelink on Gentoo or any other distribution, too. Just install it, tell it where to look for your binaries, and do soemthing like 'prelink -amfR'

You won't get a general 50% performance boost though, no matter what anyone says.

As to why the prelink people don't improve gnu ld, you've got me.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot believe the press this amateurish attempt at an distribution is getting, the guy hasnt developed any technology, he just recycles parts from other distributions. His "optimisation" is basically a process that you can do on any other linux system, and he compiles his packages so that they only run on modern on processors, of course rh/slack cant do this, as people would be screaming if they cant use their systems on that old pentium as a router.
Please people, read the crap he writes on his website, the guy is an idiot. Granted, he seems to have a gift for marketing (I really dont know how he's pulled this off, given the crap he writes and his shoddy amateurish product).

Re:*begs to differ*

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but debian is the fanboy distro. Some of us actually want to get work done without all the politics of debian.

Some of us actually want to get work done without the hassle of an unacceptably long (except perhaps for the "fan boy" who might enjoy such a chore, or the neophyte who may find it educational) install process or compiling stuff from scratch. We want a free operating system that "just works". We use Debian GNU/Linux.

Re:ha

[Paul d'Aoust]

well, really, the poster of the article meant the first serious competition for the niche that Gentoo fills: a built-from-source, performance-tuned distro.

yap yap

[itzdandy]

yap yap yap, try it b4 you critisize.

so many people here are saying this is NOT that great but have not tried it. so here

http://iso.linuxquestions.org/download/http/www.tl m-project.org/yos-i686-2.1.0-4.iso.torrent

a nice torrent for you to play with

Familiar

[anourkey]

The entire GUI is not entirely copied, but the yoper control panel looks awfully reminiscent of another system preferences interface. No wonder yoper is so great!

Re:Familiar

[Ancient Devices King]

You're right. They even have the old split smiley face that older MacOS versions used on startup as part of two of their icons. But hey: why change what works, eh? And anyway imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. :)

Yoper OSS problems -- GPL compliant?

[fcgreg]

Quote from the article:
Its 100% GPL compliant and the full ISO is free to anyone with an Internet connection.

There have been heated discussions in the past (on the Yoper forums and here, I believe) as to whether or not Yoper is actually compliant with the GPL. When last I checked, Yoper was distributing their compiled ISO's but we couldn't get current sources from anywhere. Attempts at getting this from them was met with stiff resistance and arguing. All we were able to locate was sources from their "beta" version (old).

Since their site is currently Slashdotted, can anyone confirm whether this is still the case?

Gentoo's not the only one

[lejatorn]

Just to recall that if one is looking for a source based distro, there are very good alternatives to Gentoo like Sourcemage (I'm using it with great pleasure everyday) or Lunar-linux (haven't really tried it).

Re:Too many Distros

[magefile]

I think taking his list and adding Gentoo and Slackware would do it. Gentoo for obvious reasons; Slackware 'cuz it's so well-built and "out of the box finished". Maybe take Mandrake off - when I tried it (around 9-ish - "dolphin") it was slow, and somewhat ugly.

#include IMHO_disclaimer;

Re:Is is LSB 2.0 compliant?

[HungSquirrel]

It uses apt to get the RPMs.

Re:Is is LSB 2.0 compliant?

[Erwos]

And you know that RPM is a package manager, and Aptitude is not, right? It's like saying "it uses KDE, not Evolution". Makes no sense whatsoever.

s/apt/deb/ would make your statement look intelligent - assuming it's true, since apt _has_ been ported for RPM.

-Erwos

Stripped binaries != speed up

[klossner]

All the binaries were 'stripped' (ie. all the debug symbols and other nonessential data are removed) in order to create an even faster base system.

Stripping the binaries doesn't speed up anything, except possibly disk seek times because the smaller files take up fewer total cylinders.

WTF is a Corel link?

[EvilStein]

You know, NOT ONE of these "Corel links" has worked that I've seen.

If you are going to post a mirror, post something that works, okay? :P

Re:WTF is a Corel link?

[ciroknight]

Coral works perfectly fine for me, and has since I've known about it..

In fact, I've been using it more than Google cache, even though google's cache is ""always up"".

Re:WTF is a Corel link?

[chickenmonger]

It takes a while for the Coral link to work correctly. Probably something about propagation, or the Coral site itself having to download the entirety of an already ungodly-slow website.

The /. article on it described this wait quite well.

Does this person know how to use Gentoo?

[gipsy boy]

"The boot time is a tricky one to measure, but if you clock the time taken to reach a login prompt, Gentoo wins but not buy much, about a 7 second difference in my test. But once you go to starting X, Yoper leaps ahead and can have me browsing the web, editing an office doc, and chatting in the IRC before Gentoo got me into a GUI."

I'm not sure what this person is talking about here. Is he talking about KDE again? Well, I use fluxbox and it takes under 2 seconds to get into my X system after typing "xinit". (most of which goes to driving my nVidia card)

I run Gentoo and I don't see where the 'competition' lies, exactly.. I'm sure you can make Gentoo's KDE as 'fast' as Yope's since it can do all those things Yope does with gcc, when you emerge the KDE package. I feel this article misinformed some people really, this distro looks pretty weak in my opinion.

Re:Does this person know how to use Gentoo?

[bob65]

I'm sure you can make Gentoo's KDE as 'fast' as Yope's since it can do all those things Yope does with gcc,

It's hard to compare things with Gentoo, as there's really no "default" to compare against. I think the point is that Yoper has a bunch of performance tweaks out of the box, and *some* people use Gentoo primarily for the ability to add performance tweaks. For those people, Yoper may be competition because they may prefer the significantly faster installation and upgrade time for apps that comes with a binary-based distro.

Re:Does this person know how to use Gentoo?

[gipsy boy]

I didn't mean to bash Yoper by the way; like someone else said here, 'it's all linux, it's all good'.

The thing is I *like* tweaking my OS, it's like tuning your car, or washing it and then admiring its new shine. And people complain about Gentoo's installation, while it's brilliant in my opinion! You can use the tools of a mini-distro to partition your drives with fdisk etc, and you just see your own kernel building; it makes much more sense than another non-standard installation interface that does everything behind a progress bar! And portage is the most futuristic thing to hit the open-source world, in my opinion. Although I don't always use it. (which doesn't pose a problem either)

I just thought the 'benchmark' was completely misinforming and showed ignorance - or eagerness - from the author. I would like to see these optimized binary ideas implemented in other easy distros like Mandrake though.

Re:Does this person know how to use Gentoo?

[bob65]

And people complain about Gentoo's installation, while it's brilliant in my opinion! You can use the tools of a mini-distro to partition your drives with fdisk etc, and you just see your own kernel building; it makes much more sense than another non-standard installation interface that does everything behind a progress bar! And portage is the most futuristic thing to hit the open-source world, in my opinion. Although I don't always use it. (which doesn't pose a problem either)

(Following discussion not aimed specifically at parent)

I agree, that's why I think Gentoo is the ideal newbie distro - it is by far the most consistent, transparent, and well documented distro I've seen. I don't know where people get the idea that some automated behind-the-scenes installation process that doesn't work half the time is going to help newbies. I hope everyone agrees that the worst thing that can happen when trying to learn something new is to encounter a whole bunch of discrepencies, contradications, and inconsistencies, while being forced to do things with no apparent rhyme or reason - this applies to learning *anything*, not just Linux. For example, do you think it would be better for a newbie to calculus to begin by memorizing derivatives (to get up and running quickly! After all, that's what newbies want), or by first defining some terminology and learning about limits, riemann sums, etc? Which do you think would be the more positive and comforting experience? We all know how it feels to not be able to fall back on something (e.g. good, clear documentation) when encountering new concepts.

After using Gentoo as a stepping stone to Linux, though, I find that there is one big disadvantage for its daily use - time consumption.

do they package binary-only drivers, ala Gentoo?

[otis wildflower]

... One of the nicest things about Gentoo compared to other distros is that they're not zealots regarding non-GPL stuff like nvidia-kernel.. It reduces my agita by a mild but discernible amount, and for that I am happy.

The name... familiar?

[Thng]

Did it remind anyone else of the ummm, "band" Da Yoopers?

Singing hits like Grandpa Got Run Over By A Beer Truck and Super Dooper Yooper Love Machine?

No? ummm.....

Re:Prelinking in Gentoo?

[Chuck Bucket]

emerge prelink; echo "CFLAGS=-fPIC" >> /etc/make.conf

There ya go.

CB

Built from source

[loqi]

As opposed to...?

Yoper is "built from source" targeting i686 machines the same way that Mandrake rebuilds RedHat packages for i585 machines. Yoper is a binary distribution that uses apt-get for package management, a la Debian. It's just more finely tuned.

Yoper isn't competition for Gentoo as far as niche is concerned. Gentoo is a source distro. Yoper is JABD.

Am I the only one who noticed

[Tar-Palantir]

that many of the icons in Yoper's config utility are exact copies (not lookalikes, copies) of standard MacOS X icons? They've even got the stylized Mac face on two images, for crying out loud! Methinks someone is begging for a call from Apple Legal here.

Re:Am I the only one who noticed

[steve's nose is blee]

http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=1 5118

That's just MagicLinux Control panel from kde-apps.org.
Yoper didn't "steal" any icons from anyone. You should be having that discussion with the author of the app.

Competition

[Techiegeeks]

Yoper Linux really does look like it could be the first serious competition Gentoo has had in a long time."

So it also takes a week to install! ;)

Gentoo can be prelinked too...

[celestical]

Check this link: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/prelink-howto.xml

Next out, Yoder Linux...

[Nuclear Elephant]

...Linux for the Amish.

Re:Too many Distros

[I(rispee_I(reme]

It will be complete bloatware after 6.0, going from a lightweight OS that can be installed on a 3 MB rom image to an eyecandy "click the pretty button" monstrosity that constantly pops up FMV clips.

But we don't need 10 desktop distros

[kollivier]

SuSE, RedHat/Fedora, Debian, Yoper, Linspire, Lycoris, Xandros, Yoper, Slackware, Mandrake, Arklinux... Oops, that's 11, and I'm sure I'm missing some. I've completely ignored embedded distros, firewall distros, "server-oriented" distros and just went for the distros that are popular and "desktop friendly", most of which are specifically targetted towards the desktop.

Name the different target market each one attempts to target. Also, name three features that makes each distro unique among its competitors. Maybe for 3 or 4 of the distros you'll be able to do that, but for the rest the answer is basically "It's just another Linux, just with different package options/versions".

I'm all for "clear choices" and products optimized for a particular market segment. But I think this strong defense of choice ignores the fact that such choice is basically dividing the volunteer resources of the OSS community over a bunch of only slightly different distros.

I mean, think about it. Is it really better to create a whole new distro and make it fast than to take an existing system (say, RedHat and Mandrake) and provide the same optimizations to *those* products? As a "Linux experimenter", I've given myself headaches trying to figure out what distro out of the above list I should use. It's not a clear-cut decision, and each time a new distro comes out, I think - gee, does this mean I should switch my desktop just to get nice feature X or Y?

I congratulate Yoper on their innovations, but the first thing I want to know is when these innovations are going to make it into other distros so that the Linux community as a whole can get a speed boost, rather than the Yoper community.

there's no competition.

[LinuxRulz]

That's not what I call competition with gentoo: Who would want to install a disto without Larry the cow as a logo?

Re:there's no competition.

[The MESMERIC]

was that a cow?
i thought it was Pacman :|

#18...WITH A BULLET!

[Apostata]

I'm being cynical here, but wasn't Yoper supposed to the the Next Great Distro last year? What happened?

Re:That's great, BUT....

[Waveguide04]

Over time, the OS is getting better, but folks (especially linux savvy folks such as yourself) don't help things any by standing around and whining that it's not perfect RIGHT NOW.

Don't get me wrong, I love linux and *nix and such, I grew up on them, but that sounds alot like whining. We have the better OS, but we _do not_ have the better desktop user experience overall. Linux needs more spit and polish to cover the corner cases, which as yet, are large from the perspective of Joe User.

Re:Is is LSB 2.0 compliant?

[kundor]

Hmm, I've always equated apt with debs, I guess.

Thanks for the clarification.

Yoper in New Zealand?

[jesterzog]

From the forum: "We are not a one man distro. Currently we have hundreds of users and several people on the development team and also a new commercial team that does the commercial side here in NZ."

For what it's worth, I'm in New Zealand and this is the first that I've ever heard of these people -- and it's not exactly a big country to miss something like this. I personally run Debian, and nearly everyone I know with linux uses either Debian, Fedora/RedHat or Suse.

It's possible (if not probable) that they only deal with businesses and are never see outside of that community, but I'd hardly consider them the company that "does the commercial side [of linux] in New Zealand".

To say so would have to be nothing more than market-speak. There are plenty local companies and organisations running other distros, and plenty of other companies and consultants who support other distros, most of which have probably never heard of Yoper.

Re:Yoper in New Zealand?

[pnot]

For what it's worth, I'm in New Zealand and this is the first that I've ever heard of these people

So am I (since the start of the year), and all I've seen so far is RH, Fedora, Debian and Mandrake. So far I've heard of one person using Yoper, in a message to a LUG mailing list which said "is anyone else using Yoper?". Nobody was.

Re:That's great, BUT....

[Waveguide04]

The more I think about it, your argument seems to be based on the assumtion that *nix is somehow _new_. It isn't, it chronology can be found here: http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html#05 As to it being perfect, it isn't and I dont think anyone is really expecting such. Windows is far from perfect, but it isn't marketed as such. It is marketed as an OS for the masses. It falls short in many areas, but Joe User isn't expected to know the guts of the OS in order to load a new peice of hardware or load a new app. As much as it surprises me to say it, Apple has stepped into that void in the last couple years and filled done an admirable job at filling that gap. Have you looked at 10.3 or 10.4 recently?

Sir,

[warrax_666]

I think you've misunderstood what Gentoo is really about(*) : USE flags. Just try implementing something like that in a binary distro -- it would cause exponential growth of the number of packages. This is the #1 reason I use Gentoo.

(*) Forget the speed difference some people try to claim, it's a red herring -- like you said, nobody really notices the difference either way.

Re:Sir,

[Dogers]

great, but.. why?
I can only guess that its a personal opinion, but for me, i'd rather download and install faster than save disk space, which seems to be the idea to me.

Have i missed something? can you expand?

Re:Sir,

[rd_syringe]

I never got the rationale behind USE flags. It seems most OSS software, instead of providing a simple run-time option, forces you to recompile the entire package for some random feature. Why can't I just click a checkbox?

You imply that a binary distro would have massive amounts of packages to compensate for all the user configurations, but in reality they just compile the binaries to include all possible features, so that no matter which configuration setup you want on your box, the packages will play nicely.

Honestly, is there some sort of filesize difference that requires you to compile out unused features?

Re:Sir,

[shfted!]

I've run Gentoo before, and I do know what USE flags are about. It's just rather confusing to know which flags you need, and it's a big pain if you find out later you forgot to include a certain tag and have to recompile a slew of programs -- such as if you switch to arts from esd, for example :)

Re:Sir,

[cuerty]

You can just read the ebuild, the package sites, or use ufed to know what is about that weird use flag that you can't find any info.

Well said

[Theatetus]

My Gentoo boxes aren't significantly faster than my other boxes, and watching compiler warnings fly up the screen and editing config files haven't turned me into a guru (though now I at least know how /sbin/route works).

Forget speed or 1337ness. USE flags, rc-update, and dispatch-conf are absolutely brilliant and are the reason I stick with Gentoo.

Re:I like it < hey YOU stole MY Wordings

[The MESMERIC]

OSNews

What a most bizarre feeling.
I feel both flattered and angry - v strange.

Good thing my short novels are not online.

Aww Israeli girls are so very pretty shame their personality is a bit .. (way too) strong for me ;)

Enough with the Appl Rip-off

[mantera]

That screenshot from the article sickened me; how many of those icons were Apple Mac icons? too many!!

Was this sentence odd?

[minus23]

"Unfortunately changing the WM or default desktop will be a but of a chore, as a plug in to control this is not yet included in Yoperconf."

Maybe it's just me... but uhh.. heh.

Re:FP?

[DemoLiter3]

Looking through their APT repository I'd like to ask : they're still using XFree instead of Xorg? Just switching from XFree to Xorg made my "Applications opened almost instantly" without any prelinking. And v6.8.0 just added to this boost. What's the point of compiling an ultra-optimized system and then using an obsolete software on it? Sometimes much more performance can be obtained just by upgrading your software.

Did anyone else notice...

[cr0z01d]

...a striking similarity to Mac OS X? I felt this after reading about the underlying concepts such as prebinding (used heavily in Mac OS X). Then I saw the screenshots. Can't they get some two bit rookie with the GIMP to make them some original icons, or at least correct the gamma in the icons they ripped off?

And get someone to explain basic linking concepts to the reviewer... programs are linked to libraries, not the other way around. Linking usually happens at compile time. Binding is the process of replacing function names with function addresses. Prebinding puts the libraries in a persistent location in memory so that the bindings can be retained across sessions.

It's a step in the right direction, though.

Why what?

[warrax_666]

Are you referring to the exponential number of packages bit? Well, in order to have the flexibility as USE flags in a binary disto you basically need 2^(number of use flags relevant for that package) versions of each and every package. As example, "kdebase" currently has 8 USE flags which can be toggled independently (i.e. things like samba support, ldap support, etc.). That means that to provide the same flexibility, a binary disto would have to have 256 versions(*) of the kdebase package -- clearly something which is simply too much for binary distro makers to handle... so they make the choices for you, i.e. requiring you to install e.g. samba support when you actually don't need it.

Some people don't have any problem with installing the extra samba stuff even if they're never going to use it, but I'm kind of a purist... (Some extras may also lead to security holes and such, but that's probably a rarity).

Like the sibling to your post said there's also other advantages, but the USE flags thing is really the clincher for me.

I usually just recommend people to try it once (assuming that they're knowledgeable enough to get it installed in the first place). If they don't like it, fine. If they do like it... well then I guess we've just assimilated one more user... :)

(*) I'm overstating it since many of those optional things *can* probably be compiled separately, but only to make a point. Besides, some packages have 20 USE flags and no separate compilation for those optional bits.

Re:Why what?

[Dogers]

Nono, I understand about the nigh on infinite binary packages, but in what situation (okok, other than a server, say) would you use the flags?

Im just getting into Debian myself and I love the way you can get everything sorted and up and running by simply saying "apt-get install gnome" - it'll give you everything, gnome, X, etc..

As you say though "Some people don't have any problem with installing the extra samba stuff even if they're never going to use it, but I'm kind of a purist..." - I'm guessing its more of a personal preference as to whether you do or not?

Re:Why what?

[warrax_666]

Dammit. Wrote a long reply, but slashcode (or my browser) ate it. :(

Anyway, I think it boils down to two things:

1) The "purity" of not having useless crap installed.

2) Flexibility: If, for example, a package can only support Qt or GTK+ (but not both at the same time), *you* get to choose, not the packager. The ease of maintaining one's own package repository with overrides shouldn't be underestimated either.

Best Linux distro for newbie?

[spectrum21]

I've been reading many posts from different members on this topic. I want a new operating system for my PC, I'm tired of windows. I'm pretty computer literate, but I have no clue on how linux works, but I would like to learn linux, at my own pace. I would pretty much like a distro that I can't tell isn't windows, and be very user friendly for setup and such, yet if I want to get into the inner working and fiddle around, I can. Any suggestions? Gentoo sounds like it may be to time consuming, and Mandrake you have to pay for, right? Please help!

Re:Best Linux distro for newbie?

[lejatorn]

You don't have to pay for Mandrake, you can get their iso's on their mebsite. And it indeed is user friendly (you could also try out Suze or Fedora).

Portage

[3.2.3]

Competition? Does Yoper have Portage? Gentoo's edge isn't a custom compile, which many distros have out of the box. It's Portage.

Yoper's an i686 only distro.

There's no competition here.

Re:Hiya!

[sydb]

Hi, how r u?

Re:Oooo! Talk about stuff no one cares about

[spankfish]

Double Kingburger with egg OWNS.