Review of Yoper Linux v2.1

Competion for what? by I_Love_Pocky! · 2004-09-13 10:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

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? by I_Love_Pocky! · 2004-09-13 10:12 · Score: 5, Funny

You're clearly stupid then.

Well I admit that freely, but how does that answer my question?
Re:Competion for what? by St.+Arbirix · 2004-09-13 11:32 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

--
Direct away from face when opening.
Re:Competion for what? by Derek+Pomery · 2004-09-13 16:37 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

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-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"' /. ate my old sig. Bastards.
Re:Competion for what? by riprjak · 2004-09-13 18:16 · Score: 4, Interesting

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? by hitchhacker · 2004-09-13 18:52 · Score: 2, Insightful

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? by bigredradio · 2004-09-14 04:32 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

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Flexible bare-metal recovery for Linux/UNIX

Not as good by shfted! · 2004-09-13 10:06 · Score: 3, Funny

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 ;)

--
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.

Re:Too many Distros by Laebshade · 2004-09-13 10:08 · Score: 4, Funny

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 by Ridgelift · 2004-09-13 10:08 · Score: 5, Funny

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.

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Ruby on Rails Screencast

if their webserver is any indication.. then no.. by joeldg · 2004-09-13 10:08 · Score: 2, Funny

I am gonna say "no" ..

but then, the article is slashdotted..

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anime+manga together at last.. in real time.

Full Text by nuclear305 · 2004-09-13 10:09 · Score: 2, Informative

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 by lytenyn · 2004-09-13 10:36 · Score: 3, Interesting

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 by smurf975 · 2004-09-13 11:21 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.........

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-- I don't buy it, I grow it.
Re:Full Text by That's+Unpossible! · 2004-09-13 11:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

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

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Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.

different purpose by updog · 2004-09-13 10:10 · Score: 4, Interesting

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 by TeknoHog · 2004-09-13 10:31 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Re:different purpose by Minna+Kirai · 2004-09-13 12:34 · Score: 2, Insightful

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:Too many Distros by pnatural · 2004-09-13 10:11 · Score: 5, Insightful

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 by jsprat · 2004-09-13 10:11 · Score: 4, Informative

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 by ttldkns · 2004-09-13 10:56 · Score: 2, Informative

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

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How many computers are too many?

Re:eh? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-13 10:11 · Score: 5, Funny

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

Gentoo Competition? by TheLastUser · 2004-09-13 10:12 · Score: 3, Funny

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? by moosesocks · 2004-09-13 13:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

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-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Re:Gentoo Competition? by mark_lybarger · 2004-09-13 14:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

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? by Erik+Hollensbe · 2004-09-13 19:05 · Score: 4, Insightful

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. :)

competition by nocomment · 2004-09-13 10:12 · Score: 5, Funny

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.

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/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
/* http://allyourbasearebelongto.us */

Beating Gentoo? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-13 10:13 · Score: 3, Interesting

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.

That's great by prisoner · 2004-09-13 10:14 · Score: 2, Insightful

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 by Spyro+VII · 2004-09-13 10:25 · Score: 3, Insightful

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 by el-spectre · 2004-09-13 10:29 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

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"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
Re:That's great by be-fan · 2004-09-13 11:43 · Score: 4, Informative

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...

--
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:That's great by Scaba · 2004-09-13 17:37 · Score: 3, Funny

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?

.torrent for latest version by chickenmonger · 2004-09-13 10:16 · Score: 5, Informative

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

Help save their gracious FTP mirrors.

Re:Too many Distros by Bungopolis · 2004-09-13 10:17 · Score: 3, Insightful

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 by rjstanford · 2004-09-13 10:17 · Score: 2, Insightful

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?

--
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!

Re:Office Speed by EvanED · 2004-09-13 11:24 · Score: 3, Informative

Start up times under Windows:

MS Word - 10 sec
OO Writer - 12 sec

Sad? Yes. But specific to OO.org? No.
Re:Office Speed by adiposity · 2004-09-13 12:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

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:Too many Distros by mgrassi99 · 2004-09-13 10:18 · Score: 2, Interesting

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. by extra+the+woos · 2004-09-13 10:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.

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replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)

not gpl compliant by BlueLines · 2004-09-13 10:20 · Score: 3, Interesting

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

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--BlueLines "The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity." -anonymous

Re:not gpl compliant by CoolMoDee · 2004-09-13 10:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

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

--
Jisho - A Japanese English German Russian French Dictionary for the rest of us.

I like it by sometwo · 2004-09-13 10:21 · Score: 2, Insightful

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:Prelinking in Gentoo? by swarsron · 2004-09-13 10:23 · Score: 2, Informative

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

Re:Too many Distros by mrchaotica · 2004-09-13 10:24 · Score: 4, Interesting

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.

--

"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

Not too intimidating... by mod_parent_down · 2004-09-13 10:25 · Score: 5, Funny

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!!!!

Remembering the Yoper Jerk by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-13 10:26 · Score: 3, Informative

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 by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-13 10:48 · Score: 3, Informative

He's quoted here in an old /. article from when the flamewar was going on in the Yoper forums.
Re:Remembering the Yoper Jerk by ananke · 2004-09-13 10:51 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.

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--- d'oh

Yoper suspicious by ashpool7 · 2004-09-13 10:28 · Score: 4, Interesting

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 by pnot · 2004-09-13 11:09 · Score: 5, Interesting

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 by pnot · 2004-09-13 17:50 · Score: 3, Interesting

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:Too many Distros by nizo · 2004-09-13 10:30 · Score: 2

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.

--
I Am My Own Worst Enemy

first gentoo competitor? by WhitePanther5000 · 2004-09-13 10:32 · Score: 2, Interesting

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

Re:Is is LSB 2.0 compliant? by kundor · 2004-09-13 10:35 · Score: 2, Interesting

It apparently uses apt, not rpm.

So...no.

Re:Prelinking in Gentoo? by Kristoffer+Lunden · 2004-09-13 10:39 · Score: 2, Interesting

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

--
Spine World

Re:Confusion... by oudzeeman · 2004-09-13 10:40 · Score: 2, Informative

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?

I just have to say by Mr.+Cancelled · 2004-09-13 10:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

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:Too many Distros by secolactico · 2004-09-13 10:53 · Score: 2, Informative

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.

--
No sig

I don't use gentoo for *speed*, but *flexibility* by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-13 10:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

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").

Quick convert by HungSquirrel · 2004-09-13 11:02 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.

--
$ whatis themeaningoflife
themeaningoflife: not found

Re:*begs to differ* by Anonymous Coward · 2004-09-13 11:08 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

yap yap by itzdandy · 2004-09-13 11:11 · Score: 2, Informative

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

Gentoo's not the only one by lejatorn · 2004-09-13 11:19 · Score: 2, Informative

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).

--
-- We are Microsoft. Linux is irrelevant. Openness is futile. Prepare to be assimilated. --

Re:Is is LSB 2.0 compliant? by Erwos · 2004-09-13 11:26 · Score: 2, Informative

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

--
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.

Stripped binaries != speed up by klossner · 2004-09-13 11:29 · Score: 2, Informative

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? by EvilStein · 2004-09-13 11:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

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

Does this person know how to use Gentoo? by gipsy+boy · 2004-09-13 11:56 · Score: 5, Interesting

"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.

do they package binary-only drivers, ala Gentoo? by otis+wildflower · 2004-09-13 11:56 · Score: 2, Interesting

... 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.

Re:How Gentoo won the community by hotspotbloc · 2004-09-13 12:07 · Score: 4, Informative

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.

--
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity but they've always worked for me" - HST

Built from source by loqi · 2004-09-13 12:24 · Score: 2, Informative

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.

--
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack

Gentoo can be prelinked too... by celestical · 2004-09-13 13:01 · Score: 2, Informative

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

Next out, Yoder Linux... by Nuclear+Elephant · 2004-09-13 13:18 · Score: 2, Funny

...Linux for the Amish.

Re:How Gentoo won the community by Stevyn · 2004-09-13 13:45 · Score: 2, Interesting

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:Am I the only one who noticed by steve's+nose+is+blee · 2004-09-13 16:22 · Score: 2, Informative

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.

Sir, by warrax_666 · 2004-09-13 17:02 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.

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HAND.

Re:Sir, by rd_syringe · 2004-09-14 04:56 · Score: 2, Insightful

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?

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